Fanfic / Absolute Power Sucks Absolutely

Absolute Power Sucks Absolutely is a Young Justice (2010) Self-Insert Fic writen by Wisetypewriter.

Maxime is a young man who ends up in the DCU verse and is gifted, or cursed with complete omnipotence in his immediate 100 meter vicinity. He sets up shop on Crime Alley, Gotham and grants the wishes of the desperate. Being a decent bloke it does not occur to him to profit from his powers. Eventually though, granting wishes and despairing on what he can't grant takes quite a toll on his mental well-being.

Calling himself Deus Ex, he struggles to find the right balance on how to use his powers.

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Contains the following tropes:

• All-Powerful Bystander: Maxime is initially this, trying not to get involved in the mess of superhero politics while having the power to change the world on a whim. It doesn't stay that way for long.
• Almighty Mom: Maria is pretty much the only person that has any measure of control over Maxime without a single superpower to her name.
  Maxime: How was it that I could not win an argument with her? What kind of mom magic did she have?
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: No one mourns the Joker's death and social media explodes with celebration after everyone learns that he's truly gone.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: For some reason, Maxime can only affect things within 100 meters of him, no further. While none of his actions suffer from No Ontological Inertia, he can't affect the other side of a city or the entire world at once. He can't extend this through any means and can't even create portals to transport himself that far even though he can do it for others.
• Asshole Victim: Maxime erases the Joker from existence. He also removes Poison Ivy's powers, which causes her to mentally splinter even further. He invokes Karmic Pain on the warlocks responsible for the Split World after removing their power and knowledge.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: After trying his best to stay out of superhero politics and just live something resembling a normal, moral life, Maxime enters the fray in earnest after The Light murders thousands of people, particularly children, through their Split World plot.
• Back from the Dead: Maxime is able to do this at will, bringing back Kite Man's son as a Christmas present out of good will. He decides to do this on a mass scale after the Split World led to thousands upon thousands of deaths that he could have potentially prevented had he not stayed off to the side.
• Berserk Button: The easiest way to tick Maxime off is worshiping him as a god despite his pleas that they wouldn't. Another quick way to piss him off is to ask for his help for inherently bad wishes: like a parent who wanted his son to not be gay.
• Big Brother Instinct: The main reason that Maxime removes Ivy's powers and makes her feel the pain of the victims from her first attack is that his surrogate baby brother Alvaro could have died in one of her attacks.
• Blessed with Suck: Maxime's outlook on his powers. One hand, he's a Physical God who can wish up practically anything he can imagine. On the other, he's constantly hounded by people asking him for favors and every government and organization on the planet wants him on their side when he wants nothing to do with any of them... or they want him dead as he's a threat to their plans.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Alvaro, a very cute one.
• Bullying a Dragon: The Joker decides to try and threaten Maxime and several hundred civilians even after word of his powers had gotten out. Maxime responds by wiping Joker from existence.
• Cardboard Prison: Maxime casts some wards on Arkham to defy this trope.
• Christmas Episode: In the aptly titled "The Christmas Episode", Maxime is playing Santa Claus when Charles, better known as Kite Man, tracks him down and begs him to revive his murdered son Junior. To Charles' surprise, Maxime agrees on the spot. At Alvaro's insistence, Maxime freezes time so he and Junior could play video games together.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Maxime doesn't want anything to do with superheroics, but his guilty conscience won't let him ignore people in need, hence his compulsive desire to grant wishes and run out to help charities when he's supposed to be on vacation. Lampshaded by Maria.
  Maxime: Just a few minutes, promise.
  Maria: [rubbing her chin exasperatedly] Now, where have I heard that one before?
  Alvaro: [jumps up with a smirk] Oh, oh, I know, Mama! It was back in Star City! We stopped at the youth center and Jesús stayed there for an hour.
  Maxime: I could not just let those kids spiral deeper into juvenile delinquency. They needed that little extra 'oomph' to get back on track.
  Maria: [jabs a finger into Maxime's chest] And you, Mister, need to look up the definition of the word 'vacation'.
  Maxime: … Five minutes?
• Comes Great Responsibility: Maxime is very, very aware of this trope and it is making him go insane with guilt.
• Creating Life: Maxime sometimes creates entirely new lifeforms either out of boredom or to serve a purpose. He created the gnomes just because he could, the elves to help him manage the deluge of requests for health and healing, and a dragon because he thought the world could use one.
• Deader than Dead: Maxime killed the Joker with his powers to this exact level, per Word of God. The DC Universe may create some other monster to take his place, but he is gone and nothing, not even the most powerful of gods and demons, can bring him back. Sure enough, once people finally assimilate it, a lot of fear and discussion ensue.
• Death by Adaptation: Due to the events of the Split World, Queen Perdita dies after not getting her heart transplant in time. Thanks to Maxime, it doesn't stick.
• Declaration of Protection: Maxime declares that he'll destroy Osiris if he dares to do anything to the people whose corpses Osiris burned before Maxime gathered and revived them.
• Defeat by Modesty: While visiting Kahndaq to revive all of the people who died in the Split World, he's stared down by Black Adam's fanatically loyal and magically-armed military. Rather than cause them any real harm, Maxime decides to simply poof away all of their weapons and clothes while causing a fierce breeze to blow into them to embarrass them.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Maxime sometimes forgets Billy is a ten-year-old in an adult body and rushes to cover his eyes after stripping Kahndaq's military naked.
  • After killing Zeus, Maxime realizes he never stopped to consider that Billy's powers are dependent on the sky god and are now on the fritz with Zeus dead. He opts to fix this by offering to make Billy a god to replace him.
  • In fact, this is the primary source of conflict in the story. Maxime might be able to do anything, but his actions have consequences that he didn't foresee and cause problems down the line. Figuring out how to fix these problems without crossing moral boundaries is what bugs him the most.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Even Maxime is stunned when he realizes that he essentially told Destiny that he didn't believe he existed and that he wasn't necessary. He's surprised he's still alive after that.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You:
  • After Doctor George Powers declares that Maxime's decision to kill the Joker left a power vacuum in Gotham that may actively make things worse, Maxime gives him a call on live television. When the doctor continues to press the point, Maxime reminds him that he can do way worse and leaves the program with five words.
    Maxime: Don't make me come back.
  • After killing Zeus in a fit of rage, he carves a message into a mountain with lightning to warn others who treat him the same way: "This was your only chance. What you've done to mortals, I can do to you."
• The Dreaded: Any criminal with half a brain is starting to fear Maxime. Word of God states that even Batman is terrified of Maxime, but would rather die than admit it.
• Drowning His Sorrows: Maxime resorts to this while dealing with the fallout of his murder of the Joker and visiting Arkham with Batman. Maria takes this as the final straw and immediately has him and Alvaro pack up to leave Gotham by morning.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Maxime meets a young Jason Todd and mentally remarks that the boy is his favorite DCU character. He ends up giving the boy money and several blessings and subtle abilities.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Alvaro won't stop calling Maxime "Jesus" no matter how much the latter insists. It is a hell of a lot more than embarrassing — it is a very visible symbol of Maxime's struggle.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Maxime loves to give extra luck and enhancements to people, especially kids.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The only one to ever refer to Maxime by his real name is Maria. Everyone else either calls him by his preferred super alias, "Deus Ex", or one of the many titles given to him such as "the Saint of Crime Alley", the "Miracle Man", or "the Wishmaker". Alvaro only calls him Jesus.
• Game Changer: Happens to both sides of the balance: Maxime was perfectly okay with just being a street-level superhero and help normal people (killing of the Joker aside) no matter what (when he finally accepts a League membership, he insists on it being just on paper and to never be called) until the Divide made him accept that the Light was a threat he just can't sit back and leave be, and Maxime decides to make clear he's truly Neutral No Longer by using his knowledge of the show to give the Justice League the names of the Light's leadership and ask them to tell the world's governments that he will resurrect all of the people killed by the Divide and when the League points out that this means painting a target for everybody in the DC Universe to try to take him out or recruit him to their side by any means necessary, his response is "Bring It".
• A God I Am Not: Maxime seriously tries to keep convincing people of this, even beating up and cursing a blue storm at Kite Man when he commits suicide to help Maxime convince the United Nations that he can resurrect the dead children and there's no political strings attached. Goes without saying that he may as well be talking to a wall.
  • With no knowledge of Maxime's meta origins, several characters propose this; John Constantine believes he may be an infant God, while Doctor Fate compares him to a mountain god which usually have total omnipotence in their own domains, refering to Maxime's limited range.
• Go Seduce My Archnemesis: The gods, wary of Maxime's power, send the supernaturally beautiful Ganymede to him as a consort in hopes of currying favor. Maxime is disturbed by the implications but can't send him away lest he attract Hera's wrath.
• Harmful to Minors: After stripping the entirety of Kahndaq's military naked for pointing guns at him, Maxime remembers that Captain Marvel (a ten-year-old in an adult's body) is standing right next him and immediately rushes to cover Cap's eyes.
• Hated by All: Once the Joker is erased from existence all of Gotham throws a party. All over the world, people impacted by the clown's madness and evil do the same.
• Heroic Build: Subverted. People are surprised that Maxime isn't built like a tank the way other superheroes are, especially since his powers would let him take on any appearance he ever desired. His appearance and physique are average at best and in some cases he's a little flabby.
• Heroic Fatigue: Maxime initially tries to do some good in Gotham City, granting random wishes without expecting any kind of payment. But as news of his existence spread, people kept asking him for everything from money to health to unlimited rice pudding all day long. After this and multiple screwed up wishes, he cracks and decides to leave Gotham altogether to get some time to breathe.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Zeus first tries to poison Maxime by giving him nectar and ambrosia, hoping it would kill him like it would any mortal. After plopping a barely alive Jeyliwel in front of Maxime, Zeus quickly finds himself dying from his own favored meal until Diana gives him a Mercy Kill.
• Imagination-Based Superpower: Maxime can do virtually anything, but he still needs to will it to happen first. If he doesn't think of doing it, it doesn't happen. That's why John Constatine was able to mess with Maxime's head: he hadn't thought of creating anti-mind manipulation wards for himself yet.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Maxime has a myriad of names self-imposed or otherwise. His titles include "The Saint of Crime Alley", "The Wishmaker", and "Deus Ex". Alvaro calls him "Jesus 2.0" (often just 2.0 for short) and "El Diablo".
  • Maxime calls Alvaro "Alf" for short.
• Invincible Hero: Invoked. Maxime blesses the Team with invulnerability during their fight against Klarion.
• Joker Immunity: Thoroughly defied when the Joker decides to terrorize a fair Maxime is in just For the Evulz. Maxime not only destroys him with his powers, but the Joker ends up as Deader than Dead.
• Kill the God: Zeus is on the chopping block when he decides to torture one of Maxime's elves solely to piss him off. He doesn't need to get his hands dirty, as Diana kills Zeus herself to prevent an all-out bloodbath between Maxime and the rest of the Olympians and as a Mercy Kill.
• Knight in Sour Armor: As tired and exasperated as he is, Maxime can't turn a blind eye to the truly needy. He stops by every homeless shelter he passes while on vacation to give them an unending stock of supplies and helps the Team when called upon despite insisting that he wants nothing to do with the business.
• The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Maxime is very giddy meeting a young Jason Todd, as the Red Hood is his favorite character.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The story assumes that you've already watched Young Justice (2010) and doesn't hesitate to spoil things like Wally's death at the end of Season 2.
• Like a Son to Me: Maria loves Maxime as if he was her own, trying to rein in his worst impulses and keeping him going insane from loneliness.
• The Magic Comes Back: One consequence of Maxime's power is that the ley lines, which in the DCU have been slowly losing power over centuries, are re-empowered. This was not a problem in Gotham City but once he goes elsewhere chaos follows.
• Might Makes Right: How Maxime plans on getting the worlds governments to allow him to resurrect the dead children.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Count Vertigo confesses to high treason after learning that his actions with The Light led to the death of his beloved niece Perdita. It's unclear if this was a natural reaction or something Maxime engineered when he revived Perdita.
• Nice Guy: While he can be a bit sour and irritable from the stress of being dunked into another world and being granted godly abilities out of the blue, Maxime is a kind man whose guilty conscience won't let him turn a blind eye to the truly needy and wants the best for everyone.
• Offhand Backhand: Maxime casually purifies two high-tier demons without even glancing from a game of pool, much to John Constantine's unease.
• Off with His Head!: Given as a Mercy Kill to Zeus, who was busy choking on his own nectar and ambrosia courtesy of Maxime.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Maxime ends up creating dragons, some of them breathe lightning instead of fire.
• Our Elves Are Different: Maxime also creates a race of elves. They have silvery skin, empathic and healing powers.
• Papa Wolf: Maxime considers his creations his children and one of the fastest ways to piss him off is to try to hurt one of them. Zeus finds this out the hard way when he presents a mostly dead Jeyliwel to Maxime as a threat. The sky god quickly finds himself choking on his own nectar and ambrosia.
• Power at a Price: According to John Constantine, Maxime's powers bypass the Price of Magic. However it leaves ripples in the Magical Underpinnings of Reality such as re-empowering the ley lines.
• Power Glows: Maxime is startled when this happens to Alvaro, indicating that the kid is becoming a minor god himself.
• Reality Warper: Maxime's schtick. He can do virtually anything in a radius 100 meters around him. However, he still needs to think of doing something, meaning he doesn't have Complete Immortality unless he wills himself to have it in the first place.
• Red Baron: "The Saint of Gotham City", "Wishmaker" and the "Miracle Man", after helping so many people. It even becomes a memetic hashtag, "Sainthood for the Saint", after he kills the Joker Deader than Dead on live television. He later brands himself "Deus Ex". Other titles he gets include "Demiurge", "Archangel", and "Serpent".
• Refusal of the Call: Maxime actively avoids the call, until the Split World and the deaths of millions of children convinces him to reveal himself to the world at large by offering to resurrect every child killed in the event.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Maxime would like nothing more than to just be able to live his life in peace, but he feels like the scum of the earth if he dares give himself time to decompress when he could be helping someone else.
• Screw Destiny: According to Destiny himself, Maxime's presence is rewriting the books and rendering all previous predictions worthless. Maxime sees this as a blessing, as now people's futures can change if they try.
• Secret Identity: Despite being a globally recognized figure, Maxime tends to keep his face hidden in a hood and only gives his real name, Maxime, to people he can trust.
• Shooting Superman: Batman tries to abduct Maxime by tranquilizing him with a syringe. It goes about as well as you'd expect. Later on, someone tries to assassinate Maxime with a sniper rifle. It bounces off harmlessly.
• Smug Snake: Zeus is confident in his superiority over Maxime even as Hera bends over backwards to avoid pissing the young demiurge off. It backfires spectacularly when he's brought to his knees with a word and is later Mercy Killed by Diana.
• Spanner in the Works: After the Split World, Maxime resolves to be this for The Light.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Since Maxime conjures a vessel for Nabu, there is no reason for Zatara to become Doctor Fate.
• Spoiled Brat: Maxime caters to Alvaro's whims so frequently that the latter starts throwing a fit whenever Maria suggests that the two spend some time apart. Maxime himself realizes this after Alvaro starts turning into a dragon while arguing with Maria.
• Story-Breaker Power: Maxime can do virtually anything from raising the dead to stopping Physical Gods in their tracks. He tries to stay out of the superhero business, but his powers inevitably bring trouble to him.
• Straight Gay: Despite being gay, Maxime displays none of the stereotypical traits. It's only implied through his disproportionate reaction to the request to make a father's gay son heterosexual and confirmed through comments on the thread.
• Super-Empowering:
  • Maxime frequently bestows minor superpowers like good fortune or good health on others he feels deserves it. In a more straightforward case, he gives Alvaro the power to turn into a giant dragon at will. He realizes that he's spoiled Alvaro too much when the latter begins to turn into one while arguing with Maria. Later on, his careless empowerment ends up turning Alvaro into a minor god-in-the-making, much to Maria's displeasure.
  • Maxime decides to power up Wally and make him even faster in hopes of preventing his death at the end of the events of Season 2.
  • He secretly blesses the entire team with invulnerability which they discover when Robin is bitten by Wendigo and is totally unharmed. He later gives Batman magic ink to make him invulnerable too.
• Superhero Paradox: Discussed in one chapter where a Gotham analyst called Dr. George Powers argues against everything Maxime has done, especially him getting rid of The Joker, in the sense that it will either cause the rise of a massive Mob War to try to fulfill the Evil Power Vacuum or people will do stupid things for the sake of Holding Out for a Hero (the "Saint"). The story makes clear that Dr. Powers is a Straw Civilian and Maxime ends up calling the program and saying that he is not sorry for killing the Joker because, frankly, he had it coming, and threatening the rest of Gotham's underworld with him coming back to give them all a similar fate if they escalate.
• There Are No Global Consequences: Heavily averted once the Light does the Split World stunt. Thousands of dead children world wide is not something any government is ready to deal with and Maxine's decision to bring them back to life, even if he has to go to war with said governments, leads to a hefty amount of political discussion, especially in the field of "is this enough of an example of the Godzilla Threshold to allow the Justice League into our territory?".
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Batman thoroughly believes in this trope and takes offense to Maxime's murder of the Joker, which leads to heat between the two of them.
• Time Stands Still: Maxime can do this to get away from people or just give himself some kind of break. During "The Christmas Episode", he freezes time so Alvaro could play video games with a newly revived Junior.
• Trapped in Another World: Even with his godly powers, he can't go back home due to his 100 meter range limit. He's tried everything from portals to ripping open holes and space and trying to walk the distance. Nothing works.
• Turn in Your Badge: Maxime revokes his own League membership in Kahndaq to prevent Black Adam's followers from starting an international incident over him meddling in their affairs.
• Unwanted False Faith: Maxime is believed by many people to be a deity of some kind, even those close to him (while Maria doesn't, her son Alvaro keeps calling Maxime "Jesus" for this exact reason), which irks him, to put it bluntly.
• What You Are in the Dark: Maxime has demiurge-level reality warping powers that could easily let him take over the world or satisfy his wildest fantasies. He chooses to help the needy instead.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Batman drops by while Maxime is having a mental breakdown. Maxime ends up transforming the surroundings into the death scene of Thomas and Martha Wayne to get him to go away, and taunts Bruce to ask for their restoration to life. He deeply, deeply regrets it latter.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Deus Ex manages to achieve what he was going to do and resurrects the people (most of them children) lost to the Split World. And then William Hand makes the Earth-16 version of Blackest Night happen, even thanking D.E. for the massive army of Black Lanterns he could bring up courtesy of all the resurrections. Maxime really, really doesn't takes it well.

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