Rating: M
Genre: Fantasy/Superhero
Status: In progress
Link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/63759/super-supportive-superhero-system-novel

I'm not always the biggest fan of royal road fiction. And im not a superhero fan (I never watch the marvel movies or get too into that stuff). So the fact that im LOVING this fic is perhaps telling.

This is an actual *Story* so far. With characters and motivations and a complex world. Its not driven by the lit rpg elements, its just a story that happens to have a few of those thrown in. Similarly the story isn't revolving around the superpowers, those are just a facet of the world that causes problems and benefits.

The prose of this are engaging. I got hooked after only a few chapters and as soon as I finished it I re-read it. The characters are complex with different (sometimes conflicting) motivation. We get a good deal of show don't tell (Though like all stories its not perfect there) and there's good hints of further complexity to come.

About the only 'down side' of this, is it is still early days. Off to a great start but we're still in the build up part of the story. But if it continues in this vein it would be the sort of book id actually buy in real life.

 

Can you give a summary?

 

mmm some strange and very suspicious sounding aliens have changed human society by giving out "super powers" (via a lit rpg system) to very select humans in return for the humans with super powers periodically serving them to do quests. The powers are so cool everyone dreams of getting powers.

When not doing quests those humans act as heroes (or villains) on our planet. Our main character has a very tragic encounter with them in the very first chapter, and after that has a very specific vision that if he ever gets powers he doesnt want to be a *hero* but to be a *side kick* who essentially supports heroes.

It is very character driven. For example it is only in the last chapter that our main character has actually gotten powers (I dont consider that a spoiler since its essentially the description of the story)

 

It’s very classically “Royal Road“, in terms of the
premise. Whether that’s good or bad is up to the reader.

The writing is where it stands out, imo. It’s damn good if we’re comparing it to the burning trash pile that makes up the majority of fiction on that site.

Still, it’s only 75k words in, and the main character is just now

Spoiler

beginning to come into his abilities.

I actually think the pacing is alright, but given how much story there is yet to be written, there’s still a lot of room for the author to fuck up.

I‘ll give it a tentative 4/5, and revisit it again later once there’s more to read. I do like it so far, which is more than I can say for anything else ongoing on that site that’s not written by a DLP author.

 

I loved the byplay between characters. Best part of the story imo. Writer doles out information as required and adds a little bit of humor to keep it lively.

Worst element of the story is that it is a litRPG. The last few chapters were obsessing over numbers and stats.

4/5 from what I've read so far

 

I'll add i'm rather a fan of the alien sub-plot. I dont really consider this a spoiler really but out of an abundance of caution...

Spoiler: spoiler

I'm a real fan of how at first the aliens just seem like a passing aside 'ohh aliens came and gave us power!' but as you read between the lines it sort of becomes apparent (imo anyway) that the aliens essentially soft-conquered earth. It reminds me rather much of the colonial powers who divided up india and china in the 19th century..... only with less force heh. Essentially lots of 'trade deals' that are unbalanced and then a lot of 'superior' alien culture that the elite kids learn in special schools to ape the alien ways. That kind of things. And average joe schmoe their life isn't impacted much (other than some more poverty?) but the higher you go the more clear it is that earth govs seem to be in a subservient position to the aliens. And said aliens are essentially exploiting us in one way trade deals. ITs pretty minor under the radar in the story but im amused by it

 

I'll bump this for some more attention. It has gotten much longer and the quality is staying top notch

 

Spoiler

I think you're overplaying the exploitative nature of the aliens. They're less exploitative than "erstwhile" colonial countries are today. If anything, they seem to favour isolationism? I'd say the relations are closer to what an open HP wizarding world would be. They don't mind the Avowed doing anything as long as it doesn't directly cause significant harm. The Avowed either chose to or were compelled by normals to ape USA in the middle of nowhere.

Spoiler: Latest in Super Supportive

Story definitely peaked too early with the alien arc imo. It's now living to its promise (a superhero story) but I don't find it as interesting. There is a lot of character interaction, but it seems to go for marvelling at the protagonist's achievements (and his capacity for despair) and muddled character setup for something much later. A small ploy akin to those pulled by the Velras would have maintained the strength of the narrative (the makings of which seem to be coming together recently).

 

My favorite web serial since worm. Every time I get the update email I get a dopamine rush.

5/5

 

This is the best thing I've read in the last two years, including published books. The only problem I have is that it's ongoing and I can't binge the whole of it.

It's really just the story of Alden, as he is becoming something more than he was previously.

Beautiful characterisation, the dialogue flows well, the worldbuilding is very good with a lot of thought behind it. No grammar mistakes.

The pacing is quite slow, but it makes up for it by how much you're interested in what's going to happen and how much you care about every relevant character.

If you don't like litrpg/systems, you don't have to worry about it, the system is just a way for the scifi/fantasy aliens to make sure that the population of the resource worlds can access magic without much training. Well it's not just for that, but you'll have to read to find out.

Even though I usually prefer faster paced stories, this is an easy 5/5 for me.

 

@Blorcyn i see you posting on the comments of the story a good bit would be curious for you to weigh in here

 

Sleyca writes characters the way I wish I wrote characters.

5/5.

 

The author is bold at how quickly he changes the focus of the story on scarcely mentioned areas of the story. It really shows his trust in his worldbuilding. I just read the patreon chapters and it is getting completely wild. 5/5.

Though I am getting mad at the new regular cliffhangers.

 

Two years later and I'm dropping my rating to 3/5 and the rating is that high only because of the first arc.

There are multiple problems.

1) No character to root for. I've never liked Alden as a character, but his circumstances makes it easy to root for him. The first arc changes his role from underdog to something like a member of a royal court. I'm rooting for the antagonists even if they are clearly bad, because Alden is combining his status, "moral authority", and popularity in a way that reads toxic.
The only other character I could see myself rooting for, Lute, is whiny. He had legitimate grievances, but a bunch of flashbacks left me with that impression and that's been hard to shake off. Why? That ties in with the third reason...
Too many characters introduced at once. We have a zoo of characters all at once after reaching superhero school and no one is being singled out. They all suck time from the story and keeps development slow.

2) Slice-of-Life. There's slice of life and there's Super Supportive. When Alden asked for the system to dial it down by 99.9%, the story really did dial down. Every part of Alden's day to day life makes it into the narrative. The potluck arc must be singled out here. Straight from a sitcom and with less impact than the sitcom variety has.

Read till chapter 180 or so, just before Alden starts his therapy arc (which makes me run for the hills after the direction Stormlight series has taken)

 

Alright, I'm about to go hard to convince more people here to read this story. There are minor spoilers, but they are minor, just names and places with a couple intentionally vague slightly-wrong event descriptions, but if you hate any form of spoiler be warned.

Before I start gushing, I wanna set expectations. There's slice of life, then there's slice of life, and then there's Super Supportive. It's a valid complaint, you get the whole dang thing whether you like it or not, and the nature of a serialized work magnifies an otherwise minor quibble into a major point of agony. Sleyca is unafraid to turn a minor worldbuilding arc into an entire LOTR-length saga where you spend every single waking moment with Alden, see every thought he has about every thing he encounters and does, and even see his later reflections on his thoughts and actions in the moment. Plainly, some people are just going to be stonewalled by this fact alone, if you can't stand Alden or you need high stakes to stay engaged, super supportive is not for you right now. It may be in the future when Alden is more developed, but he's not knocking heads and taking names anytime soon, he's an ant in a big, big, big hive.

I won't pretend the story is without flaws, or that it's not going to be a hard no for some people, but I don't want to focus on them and they're mostly minor anyway. For example, I think dialogue tags are arguably the weakest part of her writing.

And though I don't want to unfairly engage with @Dubious Destiny's post when he may not be here to expound, I feel one point in particular I must address. Alden in no way, shape, or form, combines status, moral authority, and popularity at all, let alone combining into something toxic. This is like reading the Bible and your takeaway is that Jesus was a rich carpenter who used his money and connections to travel the world orchestrating a rebellion against Rome.

Super supportive is a masterpiece work and has not been done justice in this thread. I fully believe it to be a watershed moment in the age of modern publishing, more than worthy of being mentioned alongside all-timers like Worm and The Wandering Inn. Unrepentant gushing follows.

Spoiler: Main Post

Sleyca is a rare class of writer. There aren't many authors whose every character breathes, who pop off the page fully realized with a vigor that astounds. She does this as naturally as breathing, every character is interesting. The way a doctor sits is interesting. It's telling of the life he's lived, how he thinks about himself, where he came from and where he's going. She doesn't draw attention to this fact, it's just that everything is so caringly crafted that you know there is meaning, and the characters are so vivid that you can know that meaning just from her putting the action in text.

Her grasp of character is astounding, and she's so confident in this fact that at the start of the school arc and through a decent portion of it, I thought she had lost control of how many characters there are and it would be a MHA situation where there's a small handful of relevant characters and the rest are never mentioned or only as background fodder. As of 258, That is emphatically not the case, but neither is it the case that the story has reveled in playing with dolls. Sleyca is slow-playing her hand, but it's obvious one of Alden's "super powers" is that he's that guy who knows a guy, and this totally works only because Sleyca crafts the story with such meticulous care.

It's easy for a supporting character to be that guy who knows a guy, but it's very hard for a main character to be, because it either comes out of nowhere or it's so obvious when it's coming up. It's hard to make hype, but when it hits it hits, see Avengers. Super Supportive has this in spades. Every character is so likable and so easy to cheer for that you can't help but feel great when they achieve something, even if they're only a minor side character. This has already paid off when Kon fixed the heirloom. Comments were going rabid for him to do it, and when Alden actually did summon Kon and it worked, it was as satisfying as if Alden had won a big fight, I'm still happy about it months later. And the entire chapter after that was a masterpiece in character work.

Sleyca took us on an emotional journey in two chapters that many books struggle their entire lengths to achieve. she did that with a character who had barely any screentime up to that point. Some flashes here and there, a couple tiny scenes, and she spun it into a crescendo she's still riveting off of to this day, most of a year later. Further, when Alden summoned Kon, there was another even more minor character who left an impression on readers so indelible that half a year later it's still hitting emotionally, and that character loomed large in a small interplay between Emban and Alden, and it was one of the best scenes so far, purely because of the touching poignancy of that one super small side character who we saw months ago irl, who wasn't even present for the interplay between Emban and Alden and was barely mentioned. And Sleyca never pointed out how big an impact that character was having on that moment, it was conveyed solely through character and dialogue. You could miss it entirely if you weren't careful, but we know all the characters so well that she doesn't think it needs to be said.

I have re-read certain chapters a dozen times, and still every time I re-read them I discover some new facet, a puzzle piece in who this person is, what they want, where they come from, how they think. You can go through Sleyca's chapters with a fine toothed comb and rather than finding tangled threads and plot holes, you find a deep well of meaning and nuance to flesh out some of the most layered character and world building you'll find in all of fiction. I'll finish a new chapter, sit with it, read it again and extract twice as much meaning from it as I did before. The quality of her characterization is excellent, easily deserving of a place among Abercrombie, Pratchett, Bujold, Ursula Le Geuin, et al.

As you would expect, Alden is an exceptional protagonist, for good and for ill. He is inarguably one of the most fleshed out MCs in fiction, but not the most interesting. He has so much depth and nuance, so many facets you could pick apart and examine, he's a great character with the life and backstory you expect a protagonist to have, but he is not inherently interesting in the way a Frodo or Harry Potter or Ned Stark is interesting. This is an explicit point in the story, people expect him to be so much more based on rumors and hearsay and actual things he's done that they're left taken aback when they finally meet. Even after knowing him a while, a lot of people don't know what to make of the gap between his clear achievements and the way he is in person.

This is changing with the the therapy arc, and though I've not read Stormlight I can't imagine its therapy looks anything like Super Supportive's does. I've read a lot of therapy arcs and Super Supportive's is hands down the best I've ever seen, it never strays into talk therapy yet strikes at the heart of what it is to be human with a poignancy authors dream of. If any therapy arc had one of the key scenes between Healer Yenu or Stu and Alden, I genuinely think the general public would consider it not only a standout therapy arc in general but also a highlight of the author's entire career.

If you've ever heard the phrase worldbuilding is character building, you know what to expect from Sleyca in this regard. This is some of the most detailed, thorough, painstaking worldbuilding you're going to find outside of dedicated worldbuilding projects. I understand the gravity of the statement, but the Artonans are the most fleshed out, unique, and fascinating race introduced to the canon since Tolkien's elves, in my opinion. The Artonans are distinctly, undeniably alien. Their culture is alien, their temperament and philosophies are incongruent with human outlooks. They're other than us. But looking at them, you can almost see how an advanced human society could end up like that.

This isn't your typical, the blue aliens have a couple odd phrases and a single odd moral quirk. Artonan is so beautifully portrayed through the lens of English that I don't for a second doubt that when the characters are speaking Artonan, they're speaking Artonan. Turns of phrase aren't pinched out with great care, they're a dime a dozen, each rich in history and meaning even if you don't have a clue what it is. Some of them are so alien yet so intuitive that they've started slipping into my casual speech and coloring my thoughts. Many things can be made closer to perfection, and some things really aren't worth the turning of an eye.

Everything is handled with respect and care. Everything. The Artonan capitol world, Artona I, has barely had any screentime at all but has more character, more character development, and more to say, than can be reasonably summated here. Unironically, I could gush about the Artonan subway. it would have been so easy to ignore that detail entirely, or try so hard to make it cool or to paper over it with a word or a sentence. But instead you you read it and at once it's so Artonan it's obvious it could be no other way, and at the same time you're learning a whole new aspect of Artonans that you never would have thought of in a million years, and somehow Sleyca also makes the description of an Artonan subway resonate with the human condition. All without ever mentioning it one time, solely through subtext and natural, easy dialogue between characters.

in my opinion the greatest display of skill and confidence Sleyca has performed is Anesidora. The city of superheroes on Earth. Even many great authors would have tripped over this I think. Artona I is the homeworld of a species which comprises the only known multiversal empire in existence. Its histories are deep, steeped in secrets and turmoil. Theirs is a rich tapestry with folktales (which Sleyca writes wonderfully), idioms, political factions, dialects, social classes, poems, music, festivals, all with histories and traditions thousands or tens of thousands of years old.

Anesidora is the world's biggest melting pot and the cauldron is red hot. It's a chaotic mix of everyday and fantastical, with big personalities everywhere you look and a hodgepodge of cultures that come together in what can only be described as an Anesidoran way. Things are weird there, and tacky, and honestly kind of cringe. People go crazy over mocktails. They have really bad sayings, like "over apexing" a skill meaning to invest too many points into it. But they have some cool things too, like having a "boater" is probably a term that's going to stick around. But Anesidora is young and it's never had a chance to figure itself out, everyone is trying everything all at once everywhere all of the time and just seeing what sticks. Anesidora is, in a traditional web novel, honestly not that good of a worldbuilding example. Above average, sure, but not something that would stick out in your memory. Anesidora will stick around, not because of what Sleyca has said about it, but by what she has left unsaid about it, sure that the readers will pick it up and appreciate it through the sheer skill of her craft. And she's not wrong, a sizable portion of the reader base likes Anesidora more than Artona.

The problem with writing a review for Super Supportive isn't that there isn't enough to talk about it's that there's so much to talk about that there could be no end once you start, and the way it's written, talking about one aspect necessitates discussion of another or you do them both injustice. Truly, this is one of the most intricately written works I've read. It's not Malazan, but it's not as far off as you would expect, and closer than a post like this can convey. Super Supportive isn't a perfect story, it's going to turn off a large number of people just for being what it is, but if you like great characters, great storytelling, and great care taken by a master of the craft, and you don't mind that there are no training montages where we're going, you owe Super Supportive a solid try. In progression fantasy and the broader superhero genre as a whole, Super Supportive is unequaled at what it excels in.

Anyway, 5/5

 

I'm not sure what the latest chapters say, but it's the general student body cooing over Alden either for his deeds, being close to the Artonan Generals, others being small-time manipulative, getting trounced, and increasing Alden's social clout (scenes with Winston and Lute's grandmother were some exact picks in mind. The general tone he has in the setting is akin to that of a popular teacher's pet).

Nothing quite so grand as Rome and Jesus, just small time stuff and Alden being flawless in all of them. Character flaws would have been more interesting for the SoL mega arc.