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Self-absorbed characters in Fan Works.


Crossovers
  • All For Luz:
    • His Quirk name says it all. Not even Tomura, Gigantomachia, Yoichi or Luz are exceptions to All For One's egomania, viewing them more as extensions of his will than their own person's.
    • When it comes down to it, the Death Camp is for Governor Maxwell's sake rather than for his country's, fearing the new Quirk users in the U.S. will plot to overthrow him.
    • Kennedy planned to keep the $10 billion prize money to himself after his team wins the game and leave the rest of his teammates out in the cold.
    • Tyler Wittebane only cares about himself and his goals. At the end of the day, everything he does his for his own benefit: hiring assassins after people he doesn't like, and wishes to eradicate all superhumans and other supernatural beings, believing it was his destiny by God to do it. All he wants is for the world to reflect his viewpoint and for there to be no dissenting opinions, much like his ancestor Belos before him.
  • Issa in Angry Women and Love Bites is furious at the idea of Gyokuro seeing another man behind his back, ignoring that not only are they not married, but he's married to another woman and had a child with another woman while actively courting Gyokuro, all while basically ignoring Gyokuro for the last several years.
  • In Avenger Goddess, Stane’s inner thoughts make it clear that he considers himself the true head of Stark Industries while regarding Tony as nothing more than a skilled employee who shows up occasionally and brings in a few brilliant ideas while Stane deals with the hard parts of running the business.
  • Avenger of Steel:
    • This trope sums up Lorelei’s attitude precisely when she comes to Earth; as far as she’s concerned, everyone else should be worshipping her and that’s it.
    • Later on, the Beast of the Hand demonstrates a warped version of this; it's willing to provoke the destruction of this universe just so that it can feed on the despair of that destruction in the moments before it dies.
  • In Avengers: Infinite Wars, when Spider-Man becomes involved in the events of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Wilson Fisk/the Kingpin is clearly presented as this in his efforts to reclaim his lost family by taking versions of them from another reality. Not only is Fisk ignoring the wider risks of his experiments damaging the fabric of reality, but he’s also ignoring the personal question of whether these alternates would want to be with him rather than stay in their own worlds in the first place.
  • In the Avengers of the Ring sequel Methteilien, Thanos continues to consider himself the "hero" when compared to Morgoth (who wants to use the Gauntlet to remake the universe in his image where Thanos "just" wants to kill half the universe). At one point, Thanos even contacts Earth and identifies himself as the only hope for salvation for the universe, but the heroes of Earth and Arda all reject this idea.
  • Robin calls Sasuke out on this in the DC/Naruto crossover Connecting the Dots while taunting him. When Sasuke drops into a rant about how "No one knows my pain" and losing his clan, Robin shuts him up by pointing out that in the DC universe, that is considered getting off lucky.
    Sasuke: Oh? And what about losing your entire clan? Do you know what that is like"
    Robin: No. (shrugs) Do you know what it's like to lose your entire planet? Your entire species? Neither do I, but I know plenty who have, and none of them are as big a loser as you are. (laughs) So you've lost a lot. But have you ever sacrificed something? Or do you just think you deserve everything outright? Cause seriously? That's like a little baby whining for toys he can't have.
  • Code Prime: While Megatron started out as a revolutionary trying to bring equality to Cybertron, he soon became obsessed with gaining personal power, to the point that he started a civil war and destroyed his home planet, and hasn't slowed down since.
  • Contact at Kobol
    • The definition of Admiral Helena Cain’s attitude. When her actions result in a fight between the Tau’ri and the Colonial fleet because she assumed they were Cylons breaking the treaty and reacted accordingly, Cain goes out of her way to present a scenario where her actions are ‘justified’ under Colonial law so that the Tau’ri are punished for the resulting deaths while she is spared punishment (albeit presenting it as wanting justice for the Colonial soldiers who died in the fight), when she could have simply acknowledged it was just a tragic accident, accepted a personal punishment and let the whole thing go.
    • To a degree, this is part of the problem in trying to make the Twelve Colonies aware of the wider universe; religion is so important to them that many of their people find it hard to accept that aliens are real when their holy writings state that humanity was given the stars by the Lords of Kobol. They can only ‘reconcile’ it with their existing beliefs by convincing themselves that they have a Gods-given right to rule the aliens, even the more advanced Nox.
  • While being held hostage by Dante in Dante's Night at Freddy's, The Marionette attempts to garner his sympathy by explaining his backstory, being a child who was killed outside Fredbear's Diner and recruiting the spirits of his fellow murdered children to gain revenge. Instead, this just pisses Dante off more, since he points out that the other children weren't given a choice in the matter and are being held, against their will, as tools for Marionette's vengeance against a man they may never encounter again.
  • Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls:
    • Grogar says he's trying to master Equestrian magic to both improve the Hollow condition and benefit himself...then immediately admits he's completely doing it for his own benefit with the Hollow condition being a mere afterthought. He repeatedly states that it is his ambition and destiny to be the one to guide Hollowkind to true evolutionary perfection, and he seethes at the fact he still has to rely on Tirek and Chrysalis' favor.
    • Guto wants to be seen as the Arrancar that successfully conquers the Quincy and Soul Reapers and will take any opportunity to make a move he believes will advance his position. He drills obedience into his horde and pushes them in their training because he views their performance as a reflection of his own ability. Gilda even admits to Fluttershy she realized a long time ago that Guto has only ever cared about his glory and power with anyone else as just a stepping stone.
    • The Storm King, naturally. He's the one who stabs Tempest in the back when she's the one trying to find a compromise between Monster X's group and him, absorbs the entire Hollow army for a power up to selfishly take down Tirek and kill those against him, an he has the audacity to suggest he's the one wronged.
  • In eXtra power twin, Harry's twin brother Aiden and Dumbledore continually fixate on the idea that they are the "heroes" of these events, to the extent that Dumbledore sees nothing wrong with essentially planning to have Harry killed as collateral damage in Voldemort's latest schemes while Aiden uses the opportunity to prove himself. Dumbledore is so focused on his belief that Aiden is the Boy-Who-Lived that he never acknowledges how unsuitable Aiden is for this task until Voldemort kills Aiden in the Department of Mysteries, by which point it's too late for Dumbledore to try and win Harry over to act as a 'substitute' for The Poorly Chosen One.
  • In An Extraordinary Journey, this sums up the Scoobies' initial 'justification' for their treatment of Willow when she returns to Sunnydale after officially joining the SGC; when the Scoobies' telepaths can't read Willow's mind and their hackers can't access her classified record, Buffy becomes convinced that Willow's new assignment is something to do with the supernatural and attempts everything up to outright torture to get Willow to tell them about her new job, including a truth spell so powerful that Willow only stops herself talking by using her telekinesis to sever her own vocal cords.
  • Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters:
    • Phobos is very clear on the fact that as long as he rules, he doesn't care if all of Meridian suffers. Even before Wong's first failure, he was silently considering taking his dark chi magic for himself after gaining the Heart of Meridian, just because he could.
    • Though not to the same extent as her brother, Elyon shows that she's more concerned about gaining her own happiness than anything else.
  • In the Harry Potter/Stargate Atlantis/Torchwood crossover Harry Potter and the Ancient's Bane, not only does Lily Potter become caught up in the idea of her 'status' as the mother of the Chosen One, but her elder son Thomas has an inflated opinion of himself despite being an academically average student who indirectly causes Hermione's death in first year and bribes his way onto the Quidditch team even though he isn't very good. After Lily's attempt to steal the prophecy confirms that Thomas isn't the Chosen One, Dumbledore tries to get control of Harry (who has been presumed dead for years), but by that point, James Potter has already found Harry (now living under the alias of Jason Sheppard in the custody of his brother John) and begun giving him independent training in magic, subverting all of Dumbledore's attempts to control him.
  • In Harry Potter and the Escape to New York, this is Dumbledore's main weakness in dealing with Harry. He has become so fixated on the idea that he alone knows what is necessary for the good of the wizarding world that he sees nothing wrong with his plans to manipulate Harry's life so that Harry follows Dumbledore’s plans, even if that means essentially brainwashing Harry to follow Dumbledore’s agenda. This leads to Dumbledore's loss when he is taken to court, as he is so certain he's right he thinks he can convince other people that it's for the "greater good" that Harry be made to abandon a life where he’s happy and go back to a country he hasn't visited for years.
  • Anakin Skywalker is a downplayed example in I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. While he's genuinely upset for Ahsoka that she was put through a sham trial and decided to leave the Jedi Order rather than become a Knight, a significant amount of his anger is because Ahsoka leaving means he didn't get promoted to Jedi Master, which would've made him one of the youngest in history.
  • In the Infinity Crisis spin-off Distant Cousins, Lex Luthor demonstrates his usual arrogance when he makes plans to unleash Doomsday, a creature that even General Zod believed was too dangerous and unpredictable to use against Superman, simply because Lex believes that he will be able to control it.
  • Infinity Train: Blossomverse:
    • Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily plays with this. Gladion insists that everything he did was for his sister's sake — that he did what was necessary to become strong enough to protect her from everything. However, his methods completely disregarded how Lillie felt about any of it, as he left her behind for years, keeping critical information from her and everybody else... and would have continued doing so had circumstances not forced the truth out. In the aftermath of it all, Lillie believes that much of her suffering could have been avoided if he'd been more honest, and resents him for leaving her behind and treating her like a helpless Damsel in Distress. For his part, Gladion dismisses her frustration as ingratitude, complaining about how she doesn't understand how much he suffered on his quest... while refusing to spare a single thought to how she felt all this time.
    • Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Much like Gladion in Knight of the Orange Lily, Goh's desire to 'save' Chloe is Secretly Selfish — he wants everything to go back to normal for the sake of soothing his guilty conscience. What Chloe wants isn't a factor; when she tells him outright that she wants to be left alone, he completely ignores it in favor of pleading with her to come back.
      • Goh's also selfishly possessive of Ash, becoming incredibly upset after learning that he's started dating Trip... to the point that he considers telling Delia in hopes that she won't approve and will break them up.
      • Goh also reacts poorly to anyone showing concerns about anyone else who's potentially trapped on the Train, as he sees that as distracting from the matter of Chloe (and, by extension, solving his problems first, as Chloe matters more to him than anyone else).
      • As the second arc continues, Goh sees Chloe's Character Development as a threat to his cushy lifestyle, blaming her for everything that goes wrong — including when his parents punish him for trying to smear and ruin her reputation. Any pretense of wanting her back for her own sake or safety has evaporated, and he wants nothing more than to make her hurt and stamp her back down into place.
  • Buffy feels anything Xander does in Influenced Out of Normality is about her. Xander spends time with his girlfriend? He's snubbing her. Xander wears his letterman jacket to school? He's rubbing in her face that he's more popular than her. Xander opposes her having a relationship with Angel? He's clearly jealous rather than considering the very valid concern that she'll break the curse on Angel again and release Angelus a second time. To a lesser extent, this applies to how she feels about others as well. When Cordelia forgets to inform her what day picture day is, Buffy believes Cordelia did it out of spite. At one point Xander wonders if she has a victim complex.
    • Buffy never bothers spending time with Faith and in fact demands to know why she's at the school prom when she's homeschooled (Cordelia got Faith a date) and generally just treats Faith like a sidekick. The only time Buffy shows real concern regarding Faith, it's because she wasn't consulted about where Faith should live, insisting she (Buffy) should decide because she's the Slayer, even when the others point out that it has nothing to do with slaying.
  • Kim Possible: The Next Generation opens with Kim Possible an ensign on the Enterprise-D (Star Trek: The Next Generation), currently dating Lieutenant Tom Carter before her childhood friend Ron Stoppable arrives for a visit. Witnessing Kim and Ron together prompts Commander Riker and Counsellor Troi to observe that Ron is a better fit for Kim as he helps her feel confident in her own choices where Carter subtly treats Kim more like an ornament than a person, crediting himself with giving her "direction" when he really ended up driving her to limit herself. One scene has Carter envisioning himself as a captain with Kim as his chief of security as though she couldn't be anything but an Operations officer, whereas with Ron's encouragement Kim ultimately becomes captain of the Enterprise-E a decade later.
  • Maxima from the side story to Mare of Steel that features her; she doesn't care that her hoarding of food is causing her subjects to starve, and she doesn't care if her chosen mate loves her back or not.
  • In Mass Effect: Human Revolution, Caim sees nothing wrong with inflicting suffering on others in order to save himself from his own.
  • Phoebe in A Match Made In Frost seems incapable of viewing her triplet sister's relationship with Xander in any way but how it affects her. When Xander and Celeste have sex, she enjoys the psychic feedback she gets from it, but she grows irritable when they don't have sex again since she wants to experience the feedback more. When her schemes to make them horny fail, Phoebe decides to seduce Xander while pretending to be her sister, thinking she'll get some great sex out of it and maybe steal him away. After getting caught, she doesn't see anything wrong with what she did because she "didn't use her telepathy on Xander and never claimed to be his girlfriend Celeste". The fact she dressed and acted like Celeste to have sex with him doesn't seem to cross her mind, nor that she attempted to commit rape-by-fraud.
  • In Mutant Storm, Umbridge attempts multiple times to take credit for the successful OWL Defense marks from the previous year. The only reason there were successful marks at all was because Harry (after being convinced by Hermione) took it upon himself to teach his classmates how to defend themselves.
  • My Hero Pokedamia: Katsuki Bakugo will twist logic into pretzels to claim that anything that happens around him is because of him.
    • When Izuku rescues him from the Sludge Villain, he thinks Izuku only wanted to make him look weak.
    • Izuku suddenly has a Quirk? "He hid it for a decade just to laugh at me!"
    • When Serana smiles at Izuku, Bakugo (who is sitting right in front of Izuku) thinks she's smiling at him even though they don't know each other.
    • Ojiro and Shoda drop out of the tournament? He believes that they are just scared to fight him.
    • Mina calls him out on what a horrid person he is? Izuku tattled to everyone to make him look bad!
  • Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku! has Lexi Luthor, whose genius is only matched by her obsession with Japanese pop culture and her colossal ego, not unlike her infamous grandfather, Lex Luthor.
    Lexi: [bored and annoyed at a birthday party] I know the world doesn't revolve around me, but that doesn't mean we can't put effort into making it do so.
  • SAPR:
    • Sunset Shimmer, at least at first. She goes to Beacon explicitly to become famous and has a distinctly selfish stance on how she interacts with the world. However, she does eventually grow to become an unselfish and self-sacrificing individual.
    • Amber turns out to be this after Sunset revives her, to the point where she doesn't feel comfortable unless everyone around her is willing to throw down their lives to protect her at the slightest provocation and holds her above every other person and thing in the world. Though in this case, it's a direct result of her soul being torn apart when Cinder stole half of the Maiden power, and a memory of the uncorrupted Amber is nothing like that.
  • In The Search for Victory, General Ross was so consumed by his goal of capturing the Hulk that he not only continues chasing the Hulk even after the Battle of New York saw the Hulk proclaimed a hero, but opens fire on the Hulk without checking for civilians in the vicinity. As a result, Daniel Jackson and Cassandra Frasier have to be saved by the Hulk when Ross's attack destroys Jack O'Neill's cabin while they're on holiday, which gives Daniel the chance to use his own connections in Washington to get Ross demoted and the Hulkbusters shut down.
  • Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K has General Grievous's imposter. Whereas the Grievous from Legends hated the Jedi for all the suffering they caused his people, this Grievous hates the Jedi because they wouldn't let him join them, never mind that it's impossible for a non-Force-sensitive to become a Jedi in the first place. The author has also stated that this Grievous didn't fight in the Huk War and didn't care about the other Kaleesh, only about getting power for himself.
  • The Harry Potter/Marvel Cinematic Universe fic Strange Potter has Dumbledore demonstrate this more than once. While even Doctor Strange—generally Dumbledore's most outspoken critic—acknowledges that Dumbledore's intentions are generally good, most of the time the headmaster is so focused on the idea that only he knows how to deal with things that he doesn't consider that other people have the right to make decisions as well. As an example, when Harry starts at Hogwarts Dumbledore is always concerned when Harry doesn't agree with Dumbledore or go along with his plans, such as refusing to accept Dumbledore's assurances that Snape has his trust or not befriending Ron Weasley, even when Harry is shown to be a well-rounded and emotionally healthy young man.
  • In A Thin Veneer, when the Minbari learn that James Kirk has been promoted to Admiral, they assume that this is solely because of his recent victory over their forces when in reality Kirk has just been returned to a previously-lost rank as the closest thing Starfleet has to a genuine military commander based on his long experience.
  • In Through the Looking Glass, John Dadik, a double agent who helped the Alliance during the War, not only received enough money for his services to buy his own planet but then went on to rename the planet after himself.

Ace Combat

  • In Three Strikes, McKinsey really is full of himself. On top of him always taking the credit for Spare Squadron's accomplishments like in the game, when he is outed as a traitor, he puts all the blame on Spare and forwards some of the payment for Mimic to begin hunting Trigger.

AI: The Somnium Files

  • I Always Loved Fireworks: A justified example with the Cyclops Killer given that their brain dysfunction makes it difficult for them to care about other people due to their Lack of Empathy. Saito never considers anyone else's feelings other than his own. Even before he was a murderer, his thoughts were always about how he was suffering from being an Empty Shell. He didn't care about people getting hurt and was frustrated when people ostracized him for not understanding social cues. When So mentions that covering up his crimes is getting too costly, he blows it off by saying he doesn't see why that's his problem. His partnership with Rohan is only because he wants to kill more. He doesn't care about Rohan's desires in this deal.

Amphibia

Animorphs

  • In Animorphs Redux, David is determined to continue his vendetta against the Animorphs for 'betraying' him, even though he's in a completely new timeline where the Animorphs hadn't actually done anything to him before David started attacking them.

Arrowverse

  • Blackbird;
    • It becomes very clear that Dinah's decision isn't driven so much by the desire to save Sara as it is to absolve herself of the guilt of letting Sara go onto the Gambit. Made all the more obvious by how much Sara has been able to destroy herself under Dinah's care, implying that her mother has completely failed to offer any real emotional support. Combined with how she kept both girls away from Quentin to make sure her actions stayed secret even though she knew he was destroying himself with alcohol without Laurel around to mind him, it really makes you wonder if Dinah actually cares about her family at all.
    • Quentin himself was too busy drowning in self-pity to realize Laurel was missing. To his credit, he's genuinely horrified by that and throws himself into finding her immediately.
  • In The Cutting Edge, circumstances lead to Oliver approaching Naomi Singh as his technical consultant rather than Felicity Smoak, which results in the Hood exposing a situation where Naomi was framed by Felicity for industrial espionage that was actually committed by Felicity. When Felicity is confronted by Walter Steele about this, she tries to justify her actions on the grounds that she only committed the original crime because she was threatened and really needs her current job, but Walter points out that she could have told someone she'd been threatened rather than frame an innocent woman (and Felicity never even acknowledges that the reasons she was worried about losing her job apply to Naomi too).
  • In The Outbreak, Felicity using the ATOM suit to save Oliver wrecks the suit, leading to the Alpha and Omega virus being released. Not only is she more upset that Oliver dumped her for this than she is that people are dying because of her choices, but she's also upset that everyone else is more focused on saving as many lives as possible instead of her broken heart.
  • In These Foolish Things, Felicity sees nothing wrong with hacking Oliver's bank statements going back to his prom to try and identify any gifts he might have given Laurel so that she can ask for them back because Felicity has become fixated on the implications of Laurel keeping an old sweater Oliver gave her when she was cold on a past date. While Felicity might have reason to be awkward about her boyfriend working with his ex, she demonstrates a complete disregard for Oliver's privacy and a lack of faith in their relationship that leaves Laurel and Thea pointing out that she should have considered what she expected from the relationship if she was that insecure about it.
  • In What It Takes, while Felicity frames keeping Oliver from learning the truth about the situation in Starling as protecting him, he and Diggle conclude it was really about putting her relationship with him over everyone else, even as Damien Darhk takes control of the city and Laurel is forced on the run as her father exposes her identity.
  • In Wrong Road to the Right Place, even when Oliver confronts his mother about the families who’ll die in the Undertaking if it goes ahead, Moira continues to justify her reasons for going along with Malcolm by thinking about what she stands to lose by defying him rather than acknowledge what everyone else will lose if she does nothing.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

  • Foxfire: Hongqi. Hongqi is perfectly fine with dumping his Lower Ring mistress so he could marry a richer noblewoman. But he deliberately disfigures her so she wouldn't dare to move on from him. When he realizes his toddler-aged children could be a negative since he's marrying a teenage girl? Hongqi has his children murdered and deliberately murders them far away from his home so no one would know it was him.
  • How I Became Yours:
    • Katara has a miscarriage. Traumatic and tragic, right? Except the thing that upsets her most (judging by what she emphasizes) is that it happened the day before her birthday. Topped off when, at the beginning of the story, Katara visits her baby's memorial on the anniversary of the miscarriage. She quickly jumps from mourning being unable to save her child to wangsting about how she can't confess her love to Zuko.
    • Zuko accuses Mai of this, but Mai's accusation toward him fits him better since he's the one who knocked Katara up, never mind the consequences it would have for the Fire Nation.
    • Sho, while retreating, declares he has a grudge against the protagonists because they drew his blood for the first time in a while instead of his sister Mai's death.

Battlestar Galactica (2003)

  • Did I Make the Most of Loving You?:
    • President Adar goes so far as to reflect that Roslin ‘makes’ him want her even though she’s never done anything to encourage his advances since her marriage to Adama.
    • Zarek’s only goal after his memory has been restored is to set up a situation where he can achieve power in the fleet, regardless of the fact that Adama and Roslin have already saved more lives than in the original course of events.

Brightburn

  • In A Monster's Nature, this is the key reason Brandon takes so long to learn about other superhumans, as he only bothers to look up news about himself rather than looking for anything else.

Charmed (1998)

  • Prue demonstrates a minor version of this in Once And Future Witches when she and the others travel back to 1983 and Penny reveals that the girls’ childhood babysitter Lynne was the girls’ original Whitelighter. Prue notes that she always assumed Lynne stopped coming because Penny decided that Prue herself was too old for a babysitter, but in reality Lynne was killed by a Darklighter.

Danganronpa

DARLING in the FRANXX

  • Darling In The Franxx Homecoming: In chapter 14, Mitsuru declares that Code 059 knows nothing of his reasons or how he feels and has never lost anything or been betrayed compared to him, despite knowing that Code 059 and Kyu lost their entire squad, who they considered family, to a Klaxosaur attack. Code 059 rightfully calls him out on it in a rage, snapping that he's lost more than Mitsuru can possibly imagine whereas Mitsuru himself has lost virtually nothing in comparison because he doesn't care about or love anyone other than himself.

Death Note

Digimon

  • Digimon Adventure 02: The Story We Never Told:
    • The Digimon Emperor initially disbelieves the others' claims to be Digidestined as he believes that the Digital world can only be accessed by special people, and that he found it because he is the only "truly perfect human being".
    • Mimi and Yolei have a bad case of this until Ken's death. Davis begins with it but slowly grows out of it around the middle point of the story.

Doctor Who

  • In Fragments the 10th Doctor wishes he could die without regenerating so he could be the last Doctor, treating 11 as a villain just for being the next Doctor. For this he gets transported into the body of his clone and is able to be with Rose.
  • In Not Better, Just Different, Rose arranges for Martha to continue travelling with the Doctor rather than Donna so that the Doctor will avoid the circumstances that led to the creation of the Metacrisis and Donna having her memory of him wiped. However, once the Daleks' plans for the Reality Bomb are defeated, Rose immediately assumes that the Doctor will want to be with her as he doesn't 'need' Martha anymore, rather than considering that the Doctor has just spent some time in a relationship with Martha in this timeline and may genuinely love her now; the Doctor later explicitly assures Rose that he did love her, but he's just moved on.

Fire Emblem: Awakening

  • A complaint raised at Henry's behavior in the lost Future of Despair comic is how lots of his inner thoughts can be summarized as "me, me, me, ME", like his neglecting a baby Yarne and basically killing himself out there when his one-year-old son desperately needs him, all because he ~can't deal~ with Panne's death.

Friends

  • In TO On the Streets, Judy forces a teenage Monica to leave the house and tells Jack and Ross that Monica ran away on her own. When Jack and Ross discover the truth a few years later, Judy protests that she did it so that they wouldn’t have to worry about coping with Monica’s issues and the family’s status could improve, but Jack and Ross reject the idea that Judy did this for anyone but herself.

Gargoyles

  • In Kimberly T's Gargoyles series, after the author ends the series she posts a final chapter looking at how future fics would have revealed that this trait defined the actions of Oliver Grimm. The financial backer of the anti-Gargoyle group the Quarrymen, Grimm is a part-Fey who has a degree of immortality in the form of him aging based on the rate that time passes in Avalon, so he appears to just be in his forties despite being almost a thousand. Over the course of his life, he has maintained his secret through methods that indirectly led to the Black Death- motivated by nothing more than his hatred of cats- and has spent centuries trying to destroy the entire gargoyle race because of a prophecy that he would die while being watched by a half-blood ‘child of stone’.

Glee

  • Glee Reprise: Several members of the cast suffer from this, as they're very dramatic teens. Beth, Julian, and Aaliyah all compete pretty fiercely for the position of lead vocalist basically from the get-go. Episode 3 is even titled "All About Me".

Godzilla

  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
    • Vivienne Graham notes that Alan Jonah has indirectly caused millions or billions of people like him to suffer all because of his own personal loss. Jonah doesn't care much about his own soldiers' welfare when refusing to get them away from the decapitated Ghidorah head's psychic influence (this might be justified by his Sanity Slippage), and Viv and San tear into him for using Asher who was like a like a surrogate son to him as a meat-shield for the so-called greater good, yet being unwilling to risk his own life when Emma Russell held him at gunpoint. It also turns out Jonah was Playing with Syringes with Ghidorah's DNA and Viv and San's Healing Factor all because he thought he could use their regenerative abilities to bring back his dead daughter.
    • For anyone who hates Mark Russell in the MonsterVerse films, it can feel quite satisfying to watch Mariko call him out on how he acts like the world revolves around him and his issues alone and not those of everybody else who's also suffered whilst she's tearing into him with a "Reason You Suck" Speech.

Harry Potter

  • Fleur at least starts with this attitude in Apex Predator, seeing nothing wrong with seducing boys she finds interesting and discarding them when they become emotionally needy. Even when she first becomes interested in Harry, she is only interested in him as a conquest rather than a true partner, appreciating that he has power and a willingness to help others while also being comparatively submissive, although at least a part of her cares for him as more than just a convenient lay even before they start forming a deeper relationship.
  • In The Ariana Black Series has the titular character, though the author denies it. When something happens, she is more concerned about herself. Especially noticeable at the very beginning of her fifth year, when Muggles are being killed and her main concern is that her headaches, caused by Voldemort using magic, are now annoyingly frequent. She is also the one who tells Ron and Harry to confess their feelings to Hermione and Ginny, respectively.
  • In Blood and Grenadine Daphne mentions that her sister Astoria is upset that Voldemort kicked the bucket because Draco might not be able to marry her and "stay really rich".
  • This is Harry's attitude in the The Darkness Series when Ron comes crying to him when he's banned from Quidditch because, boo hoo-it's not like Ron was there for him when Harry thought he was going to die in the Tri-Wizard Tournament.
  • In Hope Sibyl Trelawney plots to humiliate Harry because he "ruined her prophecy" by not dying.
  • Dumbledore has this attitude in Partially Kissed Hero:
    [Dumbledore] preferred not to share knowledge of any sort, as the more his ants knew, the more complicated they made things, and the more trouble they were to manipulate 'For The Greater Good.'
    He'd never quite completed that phrase out in public. People always imagined the tag line 'for the greater good of the world', or 'society in general', but every time he spoke it he completed it in the privacy of his own mind the way he actually meant it, 'for the greater good of Albus Dumbledore.'
    It really was only fair. To his mind, the rest of wizard-kind were nothing more than bugs, deserving of pity perhaps, for not being as magnificent as he, but certainly no empathy.
    • Harry himself also expresses this attitude, his goals amount to gather power, women, and happiness for himself. In the case of women, he brainwashes them to be his sex slaves.
  • In My Brother, when Fudge learns of the existence of Emma Lily Potter, Harry's younger sister, after her Sorting, he immediately travels down to Hogwarts to learn the 'truth' about her as he doesn't believe that Harry Potter could have a sister. Even after sources ranging from Dumbledore to Bartemius Crouch and Amelia Bones affirm that Emma is real and there was just no reason to tell Fudge about her, Fudge continues to act as though keeping this secret from him was a personal attack on his status.

How to Train Your Dragon

  • In The Blacksmith's Apprentice, Snotlout takes everything Hiccup does as acting Heir as an insult to himself.
    • Granted, Hiccup acted as Heir because Stoick recognised that Snotlout wasn’t ready to be publicly introduced to other tribes, but Snotlout was simply incapable of recognising that Hiccup’s priority was helping Berk rather than showing him up.
  • A Thing of Vikings:
    • A good description of the Roman Empire's attitude towards the expanding dragon empires; Markis explicitly confirms that he's making plans for the possibility of putting Sigurd and Harald on the thrones of Berk and Norway on the chance that Hiccup and Magnus's children will prove hostile towards the Empire, even though there is no sign that such a scenario will happen. Really, it's all about making sure the Byzantines remain the biggest power in Europe instead of losing its position to Berk.
    • Harald knows Makris' plan could weaken his home, but, since he would be in charge if it works, he's very interested in seeing it work.

Homestuck

  • Eridan in Hivefled was so terrified of not being normal that he managed to convince himself that sex was supposed to be unpleasant rather than confront his Asexuality.

The Hunger Games

  • In the Valkyrie on Fire series, Katniss accuses Gale of this in Viam Eorum, stating that his desire to rely on himself rather than accept her charity could have got him killed when he went into the mines. She also makes it clear that Gale can't compare their experiences as Tributes even after he joined her and Glimmer in the Quarter Quell, as the Quell was basically a joke compared to the previous Games as Gale had a comfortable place to stay and everyone he cared about got out alive where Katniss and Glimmer faced harsher conditions and had to see three of their allies get killed in the previous Games.

''Infinity Train

  • In The Sun Will Come Up And The Seasons Will Change, Dana's entire blog consists of nothing but complaining about how Mary's actions affect her, along with blaming her for everything that goes wrong, even when she herself is responsible. Plus, whenever she's called out for her actions towards Mary, with Lianna at one point telling her to listen to Mary for once, she says "Why can't anyone listen to me for once?!". Then when the cops point out in Chapter 10 that her treatment of Mary is abuse, she complains about what would the cops know about child abuse since as far as Dana knows they never experienced it despite tons of people having experienced child abuse. She's basically consumed by the ideas Dr. Goldman put into her head about autistic people and reacts violently whenever Mary engages in stimming, tying into her being a Control Freak. This quote sums it up best:
    Todd: Can’t you see anything except in terms of how it affects you?!
    Dana: No! I can’t! And I don’t see why you won’t!!

Invader Zim

Jak and Daxter

  • In Torque (Jak and Daxter), when Jak saves Keira from Erol and she stands beside him, Erol assumes that they have been scheming together to humiliate him before the Baron and undermine his authority. He couldn’t be more wrong on the entire situation.

Kim Possible

  • In Not Quite Heroes, Dr. Drakken rants about another villain invading and robbing his lab (the same way he and Shego routinely invade and rob other people's labs), explicitly stating that this case is different "because this time it's happened to me".

Love Hina

  • Rampant in An Alternate Keitaro Urashima:
    • Granny Hina's none too pleased that she can't force Keitaro into becoming manager of the Hinata Inn. Nor is she too thrilled with anyone else standing up to her — constantly trying to make herself out as the victim because they won't do whatever she pleases. And for all her talk about "helping" her tenants, she still takes off to continue her grand tour ASAP, exploiting Haruka's plight by leaving them in charge of her mess.
    • Naru's case of this is so severe that when Motoko suffers a major Humiliation Conga, she shows absolutely No Sympathy and thinks that it "serves her right". Not because of how Motoko's own actions led to what happened, mind. No, she's just pissed that due to Motoko losing her duel, she had to apologize for attacking Keitaro over her own mistake. She doesn't CARE that Motoko's literally lost everything because she's too hung up on the slight dent to her ego.
    • Kaolla Su gets into this, too. Anyone showing discomfort at her wacky antics is "a meanie", and she helped spark an incident that led to an innocent boy getting hospitalized just because he asked her to stop harassing his sister.
  • For His Own Sake:
    • After Keitaro breaks up on her, Naru continues to treat him the exact same way that she always has, hostile as ever, while privately stewing over how she's hurt by being dumped. She also gives a Breaking Speech to her own sister, accusing her of being a Spoiled Brat who only pretends to care about her in order to make herself look good.
    • As far as Kaolla Su is concerned, anyone who doesn't do whatever she wants is a 'meanie' who doesn't want to play with her. Never mind whatever reasoning they might have for 'not wanting to play'; the only thing that matters is what she wants.
    • Sarah is a clingy Spoiled Brat who resents Keitaro, especially as she becomes convinced that he's turning her father against her. In reality, her father is recognizing what a toxic influence the residents of the Hinata Inn are having on her, cranking up her sense of personal entitlement to dangerous levels.

Marvel

  • In Polarity, Norman Osborn's selfish need to be "in charge" leads to his growing hostility towards the Shocker, especially since the Shocker instantly earns some level of respect from the heroic community whilst nobody trusts Osborn. Naturally, he never admits that this probably has something to do with his being a known psychopath who has a huge kill count to his name. This comes to a head in the finale, when he almost dooms the world again by trying to throw the Darkhold through the portal himself in order to claim the glory and good publicity, refusing to listen to Shocker's warning that only the book's current bonded owner can do that without it going right into Dormammu's hands.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

  • In Because I Knew You, when Wanda Maximoff is studying the Darkhold (WandaVision), she is able to sense and block the spell that wiped out all memory of Peter Parker (Spider-Man: No Way Home). With the Darkhold already driving her to hunt for America Chavez's universe-jumping powers, she starts to wonder if the spell to forget Peter was intended specifically to stop her from finding him because he has the power she needs, her existing corruption overlooking the possibility that the spell may have been cast for unrelated reasons. In the sequel, Mordo justifies everything in the name of his own crusade, to the extent of concluding that it would have been better if the victims of Thanos's Snap had stayed dead rather than acknowledge how others suffered loss. Later on, the residents of Earth-717 consider themselves 'better' than Earth-616 as they were able to move on after the Snap, but Peter in particular calls them out on focusing on the living rather than trying to help those who were lost.
  • Steve Rogers in Enough Rope will always ignore experts on any situation because of an almost pathological need to be the one others turn to for answers, thus refusing to turn to anyone else for answers. Because he's horrendous at diplomacy or public relations, he tries to solve all his problems with violence, even if it's the worst possible solution (such as protesting the Sokovia Accords). Finally, when Tony donates Steve's shield to a Captain America exhibit, Steve starts planning to steal it and (because vibranium is sacred to Wakandans) brainwash T'Challa into allowing him to keep it.

Mega Man (Ruby-Spears)

Miraculous Ladybug

  • Alya's Fatal Flaw in The Babysitting Fiasco is that she either can't or won't think about anything beyond how it benefits her and her boyfriend.
    • The entire fiasco in question boils down to the pair taking advantage of Marinette's reluctance to "let her friends down" by constantly asking her to look after their younger siblings for them, for free and frequently with very short notice, while they run around behind their parents' backs. When Marinette is eventually forced to cancel one time since all the babysitting has caused her to fall behind on her studies, Alya passive-aggressively 'encourages' her to "Go catch up so you can actually babysit next time!", not caring one whit about how much she's been struggling.
    • Once her parents discover what she's been doing, Alya complains bitterly about how having her allowance docked is preventing her from buying the new camera she was saving up for, along with being grounded. She also refuses to admit that they'd done anything wrong, despite how they'd clearly known well enough to have been sneaking around/hiding everything from their parents in the first place.
    • As Marlena privately notes, Alya only cares about the revelation that Lila was deceiving everyone insofar as it impacts her personally, grousing about how posting her claims on the Ladyblog has destroyed her credibility and trying to blame her for everything that's gone wrong.
  • Coeur Blanc: After learning about Marinette's crush on him, Adrien gently rejects her. While she takes this with grace, deciding that she wants Adrien to be happy even if it's not with her, Chloé makes a big scene about him deciding to make things official with Kagami while Lila privately fumes. Adrien also spends a lot of time moping and feeling sorry for himself before Plagg finally punches him in the nose and calls him out for acting like he's the bigger victim when he was the one who turned her down.
  • Dad Villain AU: Emelie Agreste turns out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who expects everything to go her way just as a matter of course. While her husband uses her as an Unwitting Pawn in his scheme to punish Marinette for opposing him as Ladybug in the original reality, said plan hinges upon Emelie casually using the Peacock Pin's powers despite it clearly being broken; nothing bad is happening to her, so clearly there's nothing to worry about, right? She also treats Adrien with Condescending Compassion, encouraging his dependence upon her and acting like he's more of a fancy pet than her son, and uses Nathalie's crush on her to string her along for her own personal amusement.
  • Feralnette AU:
    • Lila manipulates her classmates, teacher, and everyone else who falls for her lies for the sake of ensuring everyone focuses on HER and her alone. She even happily works with Hawkmoth, willing to help him terrorize all of Paris if it means she can punish Marinette and 'Lady-brat' for the high crime of standing up to her.
    • While she's somewhat concerned about how Marinette has changed, Alya continues to cling to the notion that she knows what her former 'bestie' needs more than Mari herself. She also cares more about the Ladyblog than she does people — when Ladybug calls her out on how she thoughtlessly put others at risk by posting gossip, Alya's immediate reaction is to fret over her reputation being ruined.
    • Miss Bustier cares more about appearances and making her most well-behaved students 'lead by example', offering Marinette absolutely NO support whatsoever. When she finally realizes that neither Marinette nor Felix trust her to help, she wonders when she became seen as such an unapproachable teacher, feeling sorrier for herself above all else.
    • Future Alix/Bunnyx believes that her timeline is the One True Reality, and that all other permutations must be 'fixed' and set on the exact same path. She doesn't see the residents of other timelines as 'Real', and only wants to 'help' this world's Marinette on HER terms because she dislikes seeing her acting so differently... but isn't so motivated that she's willing to do so on anything less than her own terms.
  • Juleka vs. the Forces of the Universe:
    • Alya combines this with Sunk Cost Fallacy when it comes to the matter of her Unwanted Assistance. Despite how all of her Zany Schemes to help Marinette hook up with Adrien have failed, she can't bring herself to admit that their efforts might have been wasted. Thus, she continues to push the two together, ignoring all evidence that Marinette wants her to stop — that's just more proof that Marinette needs to be pushed, as she's simply too clumsy and incompetent to handle her OWN love life!
    • This is what makes Adrien into The Millstone as Chat Noir. Rather than taking his heroic responsibilities seriously, he sees Chat Noir as a way for him to goof off, have fun, and land Ladybug as his girlfriend — for clearly, the fact that they were both chosen to become magical superheroes at the same time is proof positive that they were "meant to be together". This also fuels his hatred of the other Miraculous heroes, Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence since they challenge the notion that he's special and unique.
  • The Karma of Lies:
    • Lila naturally lives by this code. Her biggest priority is protecting herself, mining whatever she can gain along the way, heedless of who gets hurt in the process. Not only does she scam her classmates with Fake Charities and empty promises, she actively sabotages her victims' dreams all for the sake of her own personal profit.
    • Adrien also prioritizes his personal desires above all else. He refuses to expose Lila on the off chance that it might make things uncomfortable for him if he warns the others, assuring himself that Marinette can handle being socially isolated and that the others aren't losing anything they can't afford to replace. He treats his superheroic duties as a game, focusing more on flirting with Ladybug, with the reasoning that she'll magically restore everything with Miraculous Cure once she wins, so who cares if anyone gets hurt? Once he learns that his father is Hawkmoth, he uses that same reasoning to insist that Hawkmoth shouldn't face any serious charges for his terrorism. And of course, he feels entitled to 'his lady's' love, regardless of how she feels about the matter. Sure enough, this attitude of his comes to bite him the ass hard as his Karma Houdini Warranty runs out.
  • LadyBugOut:
    • Alya decides that she's justified in deliberately misrepresenting what happened with Oblivio and posting the picture of Ladybug and Chat Noir Kissing Under the Influence of their missing memories because it draws attention to her Ladyblog. When Ladybug decides to start her own blog to set the record straight and combat this misinformation, Alya takes it as a personal affront, accusing Marinette of 'betraying' her by helping the heroine set it up.
    • Miss Bustier doesn't care about how the LadyBugOut blog is helping all of Paris by spreading useful information about dealing with akuma and coordinating efforts to track down Hawkmoth. All she cares about is that it's causing friction in her class due to Alya's complaining and Lila being exposed as a liar, and she tries to force Marinette to take it down.
    • Adrien feels entitled to Ladybug as his 'destined partner', ignoring how she repeatedly rejects his advances as Chat Noir.
  • Leave for Mendeleiev:
    • Chloé is so used to getting her way that she takes Marinette getting transferred to a different class as a personal challenge. All the more so when Ms. Mendeleiev makes clear that so far as she's concerned, the rules still apply to her despite her family's wealth and her father being the Mayor. She's made it one of her goals to crush Marinette's spirit and teach her that she can't escape her so easily.
    • So far as Adrien is concerned, protecting Paris as Chat Noir takes a backseat to hooking up with his crime-fighting partner Ladybug. What she wants and how she feels on the matter is completely irrelevant; they're clearly meant to be together, after all! He also feels entitled to learning who she is behind the mask, despite being repeatedly reminded of why that's an awful idea — because again, who cares about the threat Hawkmoth poses or the fact Ladybug wants to protect herself? He wants to know! And clearly that's MUCH more important—!
  • In Luckier Without, Chat Noir dismisses the fallout of the Season 4 finale as no big deal because he still has Ladybug. What's more, when he follows her after an argument and discovers her Secret Identity, he fully expects her to fall into his arms, because all of her concerns about how this endangers them both? Don't matter to him. It takes facing actual consequences in the form of Marinette deciding to quit for it to start sinking in for him that something's wrong, and even then, he tries forcing her to stick around purely because he feels entitled to her.
  • The One to Make It Stay:
    • Adrien/Chat Noir finds it more important to flirt and tease Ladybug than actually helping her deal with akuma and gets incredibly jealous when she brings in other temporary heroes to pick up his slack. All while accusing her of being the unreasonable one, insisting that things would be much easier if she just gave in and started dating him already.
    • Nora accuses Alya of this after her younger sister's thoughtlessness causes her to miss an important match. Alya's attempt to defend herself by declaring that she was helping some of her friends with their romantic troubles doesn't help her case any, as Nora's furious at her considering that to be more important than her other responsibilities.
    • Ultimately, Adrien's self-absorption proves so severe that when he witnesses Feline Fatale running rampant, he's more concerned and upset at her 'rubbing in' how he lost the ring and his 'freedom' as Chat Noir than he is by the destruction she's causing. He even blames Plagg for allowing her to exist, as if Plagg has any say whatsoever in the matter.
  • A Price to Pay presents this as Adrien's Fatal Flaw — one he shares with his father. After Gabriel learns that his son is Chat Noir, he reveals himself as Hawkmoth and easily convinces him to switch sides and support his bid to resurrect Emilie. Adrien proceeds to scold Marinette for getting in their way, 'reassuring' her that they'll end up together in the new reality created by his father's Wish. But because both of them are so self-centered, they fail to consider that the objects of their respective affections might not return the sentiment — and in the new reality, Emilie is utterly disgusted with her ex-husband's dismissive attitude towards causing a car accident that got someone killed. Namely one Tom Dupain-Cheng... and yet Adrien not only expects Marinette to help "fix" the Wish, he accuses her of being petty and selfish for not accepting his Backhanded Apology.
  • Becoming the titular Scarlet Lady only serves to make Chloé even more self-centered. So far as she's concerned, the only reason for her to engage in superheroics at all is so she can bask in the praise and adulation of all of Paris.
  • Villain Of Your Own Story:
    • In the Alternate Universe created by Alya's Wish, the AU Alya became a supervillain after finding Nooroo's Brooch because she wants to become a superhero, but felt that the Butterfly's powers weren't direct enough for her tastes. Her entire Evil Plan is to terrorize Paris in order to lure out heroes with 'better' Miraculi, then steal them so she can become a 'proper' heroine, without ever considering the impact this is having on any of her victims.
    • After the original Alya replaces her AU counterpart, she opts to continue as Hawkmoth in hopes of fixing the Wish... while refusing to admit that she phrased it poorly. She also ignores the fact that part of her Wish came true, as Marinette is much happier in the new reality... but it's not the kind of happiness Alya had in mind, and she refuses to acknowledge that her 'bestie' might be better off without Alya meddling in her life.
  • Weight Off Your Shoulder: Future!Alix wants to preserve her timeline — the one where she eventually gets to become the time-traveling heroine Bunnyx. How much Marinette and everyone else suffers in the meantime is completely irrelevant. When she botches it by Saying Too Much, accidentally convincing Marinette to retire and pass on her Earrings, she becomes hellbent on "fixing" the timeline despite the new Ladybug quickly bringing Shadow Moth down.
  • What Goes Around Comes Around:
    • Being a Recursive Fanfiction to The Karma of Lies, Adrien naturally suffers from the same issue, though this is painted as more naivete than deliberate behavior on his part. In particular, he fully expects Marinette to fall into his arms once she's exposed as Ladybug, despite the fact that she's happily dating Luka. He also explicitly believes that as his girlfriend, Marinette is obligated to put his happiness first and foremost, expecting her to do whatever it takes to make his wishes come true.
    • The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as the Agreste parents are far worse about this. Both Gabriel and Emilie treat Adrien's desire for personal freedom as just a pesky phase, and twist his hopes around in the worst possible way: part of the Wish they plan to make involves fusing him together with Felix into their 'ideal son' and forcing him to marry Marinette so they can have her as their successor.
    • Chloé is so self-absorbed that she gets insulted when she's last on the list of accomplices Nadja mentions during an interview on Face-to-Face.
  • The Wolves in the Woods:
    • Ultimately, the main reason why Adrien refuses to do anything about the Lila situation is that he doesn't want to deal with her as Adrien or Chat Noir. He even outright admits to her that he thinks it would be less work for the superheroes if she doesn't get akumatized.
    • When Amaia and Andres deliver a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about his failures, Adrien doesn't react at all to Amaia listing off all the ways he let Marinette down as a friend. But when they imply that he isn't entitled to Ladybug just because they were both chosen to be superheroes, that's what causes him to cross from fearful silence to coldly glaring them down.

Mummies Alive!

  • In the Mummies Alive! fanfics by Julie Horwitz, this attitude defines Tia, Jak-Al's wife when he was human; the author's two Mummies Alive trilogies reveal that Tia was so insanely jealous of Nefer-Tina showing an attraction to Jak-Al that she had Nefer-Tina raped (and one of the trilogies shows Tia killing Rapses and Scarab and spending years learning magic in order to 'punish' Nefer-Tina for starting a relationship with Jak-Al after he divorced Tia), even though Nefer-Tina had never done anything to suggest she'd act on her feelings and Jak-Al hadn't even met her one-on-one before Tia took action.

My Hero Academia

  • Cain: Bakugo is so insanely self-absorbed, that when Izuku finally catches a break in his life in the form of All Might offering him the chance to become his successor, Bakugo forces his way into Izuku's training and does everything he can to ruin it so Izuku will drop out and make All Might train him exclusively. And when this fails, he begins to act in increasingly villainous behavior while still thinking he's the hero. Toshinori eventually sums it up thusly:
    Toshinori: Kid, I am really, genuinely, trying to understand where you're coming from, I have since we met, but it really seems like you're not upset because anything bad is happening to you, but something good is happening to someone you don’t like.
  • Haigha:
    • Bakugo is so insanely self-absorbed that everything is filtered through his belief that the world revolves around him, to the point that when Izuku is kidnapped and experimented upon, Katsuki takes it as a personal affront because he thinks Izuku deliberately got kidnapped just so he could get a Quirk and ruin his dream. Izuku eventually calls him out on it after Bakugo barges into his hospital room and demands answers.
      Izuku: Newsflash, Katsuki, you aren't some fucking Shonen protagonist. You still call people extras, don't you? Do — do you even think of other people as real? Or are you so far up your own ass you really don't think of other people as anything but background characters?
    • Sir Nighteye has convinced himself that since Toshinori was willing to confide in him about One For All, that makes him the only one qualified to choose All Might's successor. Even more qualified than All Might himself. Tellingly, his plan fails because he never bothered to tell Mirio about his ambitions for him, so Mirio turned Toshinori down when he's offered the Quirk.
  • Izuku summarizes Bakugou's issues thusly in Powdered Gold and Pottery when Shouto wonders why he seems to dislike him so much. Effectively, Bakugou doesn't like the way either of them is managing their Quirks, convinced that they aren't 'giving their all'... and taking that as a personal attack on him despite all evidence to the contrary. As Izuku puts it:
    Izuku: Look, Katsuki's a good person. And he's going to be a great hero — I've known that since we were little. But he has this problem with forcing his way into other people's business — and I don't mean in the way that heroes do, where they step in to help even if they aren't involved. I mean he takes things that aren't about him and makes them about him, you know?
  • The Turn is set in a world where Izuku is the result of Endeavor having an affair with Inko. Both Endeavor and Shouto prove to have this in common:
    • Endeavor is a Control Freak who forces Inko to work for him and constantly threatens both her and her son; in his eyes, Izuku's very existence is a stain upon his legacy, and both must dedicate their lives to atoning for that.
    • Shouto, meanwhile, refuses to acknowledge how horrible his half-brother's circumstances are or that he's also a victim of Endeavor's abuse. No, instead he's convinced that Izuku is amused by the whole situation, and that he's being coddled by their father while Shouto has to deal with his harsh training.

My-HiME

  • In Perfection Is Overrated, many of the SUEs exhibit such behavior. Hitomi uses Mind Control to force her victims to commit horrible crimes for her amusement, then kills them afterward. Sekai uses her allies as expendable troops while planning on harvesting the Himes' powers. The Usurper expects the SUEs to serve as his pawns and advance his plan to defeat the Himes, while planning to possess the victorious SUE's body afterwards.
    • This bites Hitomi in the ass, as both the SUEs and the Himes will lose their most important person if their Child is destroyed. Because Hitomi was so absolutely selfish and loved no one other than herself, she died when her Child did.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

  • The Elements of Friendship: Par for the course for Trixie Lulamoon. ...though it devolves into blatant solipsistic behavior by the end of the book, thanks to the Alicorn Amulet.
  • The Elements of... Love?: Trixie, after witnessing Princess Twilight’s superior magical ability, acknowledges Twilight as being better at magic then her and, quite understandably, wants to become Twilight’s student in order to improve herself. Not so understandably, she insists on living in Princess Twilight’s home, assumes she’ll be waited on hoof and hoof by Twilight’s servants, and throws a fit upon realizing Twilight doesn’t have any servants (due to Twilight herself completely averting this trope). Trixie then continuously orders Spike around like a servant despite Twilight repeatedly explaining he’s not a servant, can’t remember his name is Spike, not Spine, and presumably doesn’t care that Spike is suffering from heartbreak due to Rarity being in love with Twilight and not him.
  • Checker Monarch, the Big Bad of Getting Back on Your Hooves. She outright tells her minion Helping Hoof that she doesn't care who gets hurt by her actions, so long as it doesn't effect her. The Diamond Dogs she hired as her minions ultimately prove to be less selfish than she is! This stems from her Social Darwinist worldview that the strong rule the weak: since she can manipulate everyone around her with her special talent for Manipulation, she's the strongest, therefore she can do whatever she wants. Justified, as she's based on real-life sociopaths, and thus a Narcissist.
  • Prince Jewelius, the Big Bad of Loved and Lost, the extended retelling of "A Canterlot Wedding". He is sociopathic to such a degree that he hates and tries to kill his aunt Princess Celestia and cousin Princess Cadancenote  for being more loved than him. He manipulates Twilight Sparkle into becoming his loyal pawn and otherwise uses ponies (including Queen Chrysalis and her Changelings) to further his diabolical plans of becoming the greatest ruler Equestria has ever known. Fancy Pants lampshades this when he fruitlessly tries to convince Jewelius to stop hunting after the heroes he has disgraced and appease Canterlot's ponies by preparing against the renewed threat of the escaped Changeling army.
    Fancy Pants: What is this obsession with those ponies? Aren't a few of them members of your family? Don't you feel any sort of concern for them?
    Jewelius: They dared to oppose MY rule! Any and all traitors to the new king of Equestria must and will be punished!
    Fancy Pants: So this is about you?!
  • The Lullaby for a Princess song: Celestia believes she didn't notice Luna's problems because of getting caught in this very mindset.
  • The Lunaverse:
    • Corona seems fully convinced that everyone's distrust and fear of her is due to lies spread by Luna rather than anything she might have done. It's kind of bizarre. She kidnaps ponies to ensure loyalty, thereby demonstrating that she knows the effect it has on others, yet she expects ponies to love her regardless. Perhaps she was hoping Stockholm Syndrome would take. In fairness to her, Corona is actually insane.
    • During most of Carrot Top Season, Applejack is convinced that Carrot Top is participating in the contest solely to hurt her and her family. She refuses to consider that Carrot Top might need the money to fix up her own farm - all she's concerned about is how this may harm Sweet Apple Acres.
      "Carrot Top, think fer a minute!" Applejack looked flustered. "All this is gonna do is take down both of us! Dang it, ah don't know if ya've got some vendetta 'gainst ma or what, but this ain't worth it!"
      It's not about you! thought Carrot Top.
      (and later...)
      "No! No, of course not!" Applejack shook her head. "Ya just bet yar farm ta try ta beat ma. Carrot Top, did ah do somethin' ta make ya mad? Is this a grudge?"
    • Also, just earlier, Applejack mentions that she's been considering setting up a carrot field so she can branch out. It genuinely doesn't register to her that she's openly threatening to drive Carrot Top out of her business.
    • It's revealed that Applejack's behavior is due to the fact that she believes with all her heart that 1) Sweet Apple Acres is perpetually on the verge of going broke and 2) that if Sweet Apple Acres ever does go broke, all of Equestria will starve to death. Nothing seems to be able to convince her that Sweet Apple Acres is flush with cash and resources and that even if it did somehow go under, there are plenty of other farms and farmers to provide for Equestria.
    • Vicerein Puissance, a Control Freak of the highest order, believes it's up to her to name her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, their parents' preferences be damned. When she and the other nobles of Equestria are called out on their corruption, she's the only one who actually demands Luna apologise (she is at least smart enough to shut up at Luna's expression).
    • Bray, Prince of Tambelon, invited the demon ram Grogar to the island so he could use his necromancy skills to murder Bray's parents and siblings, just so he could be king. Bray throws a strop when Grogar reveals a few wrinkles to his side of the deal - how can Bray be king when Grogar's killed everyone on the island?
    • Moondancer once invited Twilight Sparkle to a party. For whatever reason, Twilight proved unable to attend. Clearly, this was an insidious plot of Twilight's to sabotage Moondancer's attempt to make class valedictorian! (As opposed to a simple gaff from the utterly oblivious Twilight.) So Moondancer... fakes her own death and takes off to a shack in the middle of nowhere. That'll show her?
  • The Pony POV Series has General-Admiral Makarov, the Big Bad of the Shining Armor Arc. He's a Narcissist to such a degree that he'll sentence someone to a Fate Worse than Death for not knowing his name. He's actually one of Pandora's creations, which became convinced that it was perfect and therefore every story should be about it, no matter who suffers for it.
  • Vengeance of Dawn has the titular Breaking Dawn. She's very self-centered, and most of her motivations stem from the fact that she thinks that deserves everything Twilight has more than Twilight does.

Naruto

  • Naruto's sister Natsuki in God of Illusion, Host of the Devil's Arm is an Attention Whore of the highest order, frequently throwing fits if she's ignored. Notably, her inner world shows the girl cares about herself first and foremost, followed by her parents and friends, then those who worship her for being the Kyuubi's host. Natsuki doesn't even have an Inner Darkness because it's born from repressed negative emotions and she acts on every negative impulse she gets.
  • Naruto: Asunder: Naruto has this to say to Madara about the Uchiha/Senju feud:
    Naruto: Oh I know your story. Your clan decided to start a blood feud because 'Daddy' didn't take you out for ice cream. You Uchiha really need to learn how to grow up. The world is way more than about you idiots.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

  • In canon, SEELE was bad enough, given that they intended to murder humanity to become gods. Lorenz Kiel in Transposed is revealed to be of the same race that seeded planets with life and was in fact responsible for Earth getting two seeds, something that should never be done. As punishment, he was turned into a human that would take centuries to finally die and he had until his death to better mankind enough to have his punishment lifted. Instead Kiel spent hundreds of years setting the Ancient Conspiracy in motion (including writing the Dead Sea Scrolls) to regain his godhood at the expense of every living thing on the planet.

OMORI

  • Time to Disinfect: During her rant in chapter 9, Mari's mother frames everything Mari does in terms of how it affects her, with no concern for Mari's feelings whatsoever.

Pokémon

  • Cori Falls's renditions of Jessie and James are good at making each other's angst all about themselves; the two biggest examples are James in Thorns of the Rose, when Jessie is obviously upset about something and all he can do is cry over how she supposedly doesn't love him anymore, and Jessie in Blood on the Moon when James's bad mood makes her weepy and insecure even after she starts chastising him for it!
  • In Pokémon: A Marvelous Journey, the fourth bonus chapter focuses on a minor character named Lakeisha Knowles, a classmate who frequently bullied the main character, Julia, in their youth. When she befriends the local Alpha Bitch Kirsten Seeley, she decides to try and be more like her. In doing so, she begins becoming more selfish and antagonizes her eight-year-old autistic sister, Merlin, to the point where she begins thinking everything Merlin does is to deliberately annoy her and ruin her social standing with her friends, which anyone reading the chapter and every In-Universe character can tell is not true. This eventually escalates into Lakeisha secretly recording a video of Merlin having a meltdown and texting it to her friends so they could start bullying her; it backfires because the three of them are all disgusted with Lakeisha’s blatant disrespect of her sister’s privacy and one of them reports the incident to the principal and one of the teachers. When Lakeisha gets into huge trouble for this and receives punishment from both her teachers and family, she whines about how her friends abandoned her and how everyone is against her rather than taking responsibility and accepting that everybody is disgusted with cyberbullying her little sister. Needless to say, she is frequently called out on her callousness and selfishness.
  • In Pokémon Unbound, the Big Bad Aklove has this as one of his biggest traits. Aklove views everything in the context of how it relates to him and him alone. Not only is the password to his own base his own name, something that Zeph lampshades to be arrogant, he also did not give a damn about Ivory's plan to resurrect her fallen son, and was even planning to pin all the blame on her for firing off the Ultimate Weapon. His whole goal is to fulfill what he thinks is his destiny, when he was really just projecting and thinking about himself the entire time, something that Jax completely tears into him for in the postgame.

Power Rangers

  • In Crimson Rising, Will (the Black Operation Overdrive Ranger) basically defects from the other Power Rangers to join the anti-Ranger government organisation Sector Nine because he felt he wasn’t getting any respect from the other Rangers, ignoring the fact that they made valid points about his lack of experience as a Ranger compared to them.

Rosario + Vampire

  • Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
    • First and foremost, Evil!Falla openly admits that she only cares about herself and acquiring power for herself. Even her own family comes second.
    • Even after accepting her role as Dark's guardian angel/mother figure, this is one of Arial's most defining traits; she constantly claims that she's looking out for Dark's best interests by trying to choose who he gets to marry, but it's obvious to anyone who's paying attention that she only cares about what she wants for him.
    • Sun also counts to an extent during Act VI. Despite having previously spurned Gin's Love Confession, and despite this being the first time they've even seen each other in years, Sun still fully expects that Gin will come back to her, uncaring that he's since moved on to Kokoa. Moka even takes the time to call her out on it in Act VI chapter 20. It's only after Sun pisses off Kokoa to the extent that the latter beats her into a coma, and after she comes out of said coma, that she finally grows out of it.

Robin of Sherwood

  • What Dreams May Come: Nasir reminisces about his time as a slave under the devil-worshipping sorceror Baron De Bellame, and muses that for all the Baron's cruelty and madness, it all really just boiled down to the man being a self-absorbed egomaniac who wanted to force the world to adhere entirely to his desires and wants, and saw magic and human sacrifice as a way to achieve that. He was far from the first, Rashid ad-Din Sinan, "The Old Man Of the Mountain", who had led Nasir's hashasin tribe had been the same way and cared about nothing other than himself.

RWBY

  • The Makings of Team CRME has several examples (many of whom are also examples of The Sociopath):
    • Cinder Fall is a narcissistic sociopath who only cares about her own desires and getting the power that she thinks she deserves. She demands complete obedience from Emerald and Mercury and only uses people for her own benefit. She also only cares about the pain that she endured in the past and getting back at the world for it. She relates to Mercury when they have stuff in common. When he starts defying her, she sees no problem with using his past against him when she has Emerald project images of his Abusive Parents. She only cares that she was abused, not about abuse in general.
    • Roman Torchwick was said to be written with narcissistic personality disorder in mind. As such, he is incredibly prideful and only considers people in terms of how they relate to him. His wife was originally so he'd have a queen for his criminal empire and she has use for him as his financial manager. He didn't even care that much when Kincaid tortured her just to get back at him. However, this is only averted in regard to Neo.
    • My Name Is Cinder: Brigit Stark is Cinder's abusive mother who is also a Gold Digger. She married her father for his money and planned on driving him to suicide to get the inheritance. Everything she does is only for her benefit. When Cinder threatens to expose her, she starts abusing her. And she starts playing the mother-card when Cinder leaves her to die in a house fire. Unfortunately for her, Cinder doesn't see Brigit as a mother.
    • The Black Hearts: Melanie Black, Mercury's mother, shows some signs of this trope. Even though she and Mercury are both being abused by Marcus, she chooses to yell at him and deflect the verbal abuse onto him. She's also a shameless serial cheater. And the reason she threatened Marcus at gunpoint when he was about to torture an innocent woman? He wouldn't come upstairs to eat the dinner she worked so hard to cook.
    • Roman's Empire: Violet Kincaid is a ruthless mob boss who is adept at Pragmatic Villainy, but she really only cares about her own bottom line and getting what she wants. Even her attachment to Roman is simply because she's sexually attracted to him. It goes out the window when he starts screwing up her business.
    • CRME: Adam once again proves that he only views Blake as a possession and thinks that she should adhere to what he wants.
  • Atlas General Hayden White from Nora's Life is a complete sociopath who only cares about his own reputation, safety, and desires. Everyone else doesn't matter to him in the slightest. He all but admits to Ruby that this is his philosophy.
  • Several of the villains from the Ruby and Nora series have elements of this.
    • Ruby's Birthday: Admah Keter is a sadistic maniac who only cares about getting a thrill out of killing families and snuffing out bloodlines For the Evulz. He even killed his own mother because of this. He just likes having that thrill. He's also shown to be very grandiose in his mannerisms as if he wants to be noticed.
    • Weiss and Pyrrha: Nurse Abigail Lemon has one heck of a god-complex and kills patients at the hospital to facilitate this delusion. Killing almost a hundred people using her EMP Semblance was all to buy herself some time to get away from Pyrrha after she reopened Weiss' stitches.
    • Pyrrha's Past: Pyrrha's mother, Colonel Lyra Nikos, was an abusive mother that put Pyrrha through Hell just for training her. And she gets on Pyrrha's case for making Miló and Akoúo̱ because she did it without Lyra's permission. She even murders her husband, Orion, when he starts taking Pyrrha's side of the argument.
    • Field Trip: Father Scorch only cares about imposing his world order about Faunus-supremacy and the erradication of homosexuality. Any followers who don't live up to this code will have to kill their lovers or be killed themselves. He outright confirms his self-centered nature during the train bombings.
    • Recovery and Atlas: Jacques Schnee constantly proves this to be true. Even more than in canon. He is rather controlling of others and only does things for his own benefit. The reason he joins Salem is that she promises to let him rule Atlas. Basically, it's a huge ego trip.

  • The Tale Of A Cat Most Curious (link): All of the main characters, protagonist and antagonists, are selfish and self-serving in some way.
    • The Curious Cat is treated more empathetically than in canon, but they're still bitter, self-serving and desperate to escape the Ever After's confines after aeons of being trapped so they can acquire new knowledge that will sate their intrinsic hunger for information, not least of all longing to understand why the Brother Gods abandoned them and the Ever After to create the Remnantians. The Cat is willing to deceive, manipulate and kill if it comes down to it in order to achieve that goal. They know that the Ever After will lack a psychopomp to guide Afterans with hearts too weak to listen back to the Tree, but after aeons of giving bits of their heart away to Afterans and getting nothing back to fix them while their mental state declined, the Cat thinks they've earned the right to selfishly help theirself.
    • Neopolitan's only motivation is avenging her personal loss of Roman Torchwick, and she's much more willing than the Cat is to endanger the Afterans, and previously the population of Atlas-Mantle, to get her own revenge or just for her amusement, showing no remorse.
    • RWBY/J see themselves as the heroes saving the day, but their actions, behaviour and thoughts speak of profoundly selfish people who lack empathy to a sociopathic degree; from their roles in the breakdown of General Ironwood and the destruction of Atlas-Mantle, through to their mostly banal and self-centred reactions in the aftermath, and their callous treatments of the Atlas-Mantle refugees, the Afterans and each-other. Yang Xiao-Long and Blake Belladonna are characterised as delusional narcissists who don't truly care for anyone or anything but themselves and their relationship, and they're pathologically incapable of admitting they're in the wrong. Ruby Rose and Jaune Arc are understandably traumatised, but they also care more about how their failures reflect on their heroic self-images and feeling sorry for themselves than they do about the people they've objectively gotten hurt. Ultimately, RWBY/J care more about flattering their self-images as the archetypal heroes in their self-serving mental narratives than they do about actually doing heroic things which objectively help the people they claim to be protecting.

Sherlock Holmes

  • Simple Gifts: Holmes starts the fic griping about the obstacles he's encountering trying to while away Christmas in research, mostly ignoring Watson's illness except when it disrupts his own plans and assuming that Mrs. Hudson will have to perform the caretaker role, despite her having plans to visit her sister over the holidays. He's also unimpressed by Mrs. Hudson and Watson both volunteering their services to the unfortunate, as it causes consequences that make his life more difficult.

Smallville

  • In En Tempus Veritas, Lana’s first thoughts upon learning about Clark’s abilities is how he can use them to protect her from Lex, and later believes that Clark would abandon Lois and their unborn child if given the chance to be with her despite how Lana hurt him by agreeing to marry Lex in the first place. Once Clark is back in reality, she is initially certain that she and Clark will be together once she has returned to Smallville and acts as though Clark personally hurt her by starting a relationship with Lois after Lana faked her death, even though Clark genuinely believed she was dead and therefore had every right to move on even without his ‘vision’ to inspire new feelings.

Stargate SG-1

  • In the What You Already Know series, Kinsey is increasingly determined to kill Daniel Jackson even when his associates at the Trust reason that it's better to keep Daniel in play as a weapon against the Goa'uld (Daniel has developed powerful psychic abilities). When he first hears that decision, Kinsey's thoughts make it clear that he considers himself more important than Daniel even though he's just one of various political allies the Trust could rely on where Daniel's abilities are unique.

Tolkien's Legendarium

  • Feanor in The Silmarillion story Lessons from the Mountain. When Maedhros tells his wife was given the option to remarry after re-embodiment, his reaction is: "How can the Valar do this to me?". When Maedhros talks about his dealings with humans, he remarks "So I WAS right about them usurping our kind's place".

Total Drama

  • Total Alternate Island: Courtney doesn't care about what happens to anyone else just as long as she wins and her ego fed.
  • Total Drama Cabin Fever: Suzy believes she's God's gift to mankind and expects to be treated as such.
  • Total Drama House Party: Several contestants qualify, but Dalit, Kelsey, Warwick, and Xingrong are the biggest offenders.
  • Total Drama Tweenabet: Alfie is this. Tilly even moreso.
  • Total Drama: Unfinished Business: Chris, as per canon, is extremely egotistical and self-centered.
  • Total Shuffled Island Series: Dave's general attitude towards Sky and their "relationship". He claims that Sky getting distracted by Heather calling Dave a terrible boyfriend and subsequently getting knocked into the lake while trying to defend him is a good reason for their team's loss.
  • Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Heather has somewhat reformed, but is still very self-centered. In chapter 12, she flat out admits that if it was possible to leave the world for a perfect paradise with her few loved ones while letting the rest of the world burn she would do it without hesitation. She might be willing to leave the rest of us behind, but at least she does have some loved ones now.

Touhou Project

  • Yukkuris, disembodied heads made from pastry in the likeness of Touhou characters are sometimes portrayed by fans as this. Many Yukkuris would like to have an "Easy Life" where they have a good home, plenty of food, and a mate with children. Most smart Yukkuris know that to have an Easy Life, they need to work hard for it and help each other, but the bad selfish ones seem to think only they are entitled to have an Easy Life so other Yukkuris and humans should make their lives easy and they don't give a damn of the other's feelings. These selfish Yukkuris are very disliked by other Yukkuris and tend to suffer horrible fates, especially from Humans Are Bastards.

Touken Ranbu

  • The Final Sword goes out of its way to make the TouRabu world revolve around the OC Rebora. She wins the Superpower Lottery multiple times due to her godly origins, the outcome of canon's central conflict of Citadel vs Revisionists is now entirely hers to decide, which means the role of every single canon sword is now rendered redundant, the canon swords no longer have any personality and distinction aside from being her friends and the enemies want to have her by any means possible. It gets to the point where with the reveal of the enemies' true motives, the fic effectively implies TouRabu canon itself was started because of her.
  • The first entry of the Tales of the Undiscovered Swords stars the titular tachi Himetsuru Ichimonji, a self-proclaimed princess who bullies his brother, whines when other swords don't cater to his every whims and desires, and is all-around annoying. As a result, he manages to earn the ire of the entire Citadel leading to their agreeing to send him on an Uriah Gambit. However, his Hidden Depths start to show: even though he still considers other swords lowly, as their "princess", he will go to any length to protect his "people". He then proceeds to wipe out all the enemies by himself.

Wicked

  • In The Land of What Might-Have-Been, in the alternate future of Unbridled Radiance, the Empress (an insane Elphaba who has been given a normal, beautiful appearance) erased all memory of Oz from most of the world mainly because she wanted to protect her image after her children were affected by a biological weapon that triggered some of the dormant genes for Elphaba's green skin; the Empress has locked up her own daughters for years because they may compromise her image. Later, a conversation with the Empress sees her basically expressing her belief that she can accomplish anything up to altering reality itself just to make it fit her view, to the extent that she basically expresses the view that she is right if reality is wrong.

Turning Red

  • In Turning Red: Secrets of the Panda, it's made quite clear as the story goes on that Jason Vaugn only cares about himself and the profit he gets, and doesn't give a damn about what happens to the civilians of Toronto.

Worm

  • Eidolon in A Step to the Left is outraged that someone else managed to be the "hero of the hour" after a cape named Shimmer Step (Taylor with an alternate power) causes Leviathan to be driven off without a single casualty (due to her power moving everyone out of the way of lethal attacks). Since he canonically caused the Endbringer attacks in order to "prove himself against a worthy opponent", his bitterness causes Behemoth to not only attack the same city a few months later but also stop holding back. It's due to Shimmer Step that Ballista and Fletchette manage to work together perfectly to kill Behemoth.

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