Super Supportive – The SLOWEST of burns …

… and not in a romantic way, either. It’s just slowwwwww and an absolute fucking delight. This is one of the more popular Royal Road stories out there, and it has kept me grounded during the past two months of craziness! This is what I’m staying up at night reading. I dove back in as a distraction, rereading from the beginning, only to decide I was going to keep going … and going … and going. Now that I am caught up with this serial, here’s my sales pitch.

The Pacing:
It’s tough to write a review of Super Supportive without talking about story progression. This story is about as much of a slow burn as you can possibly get. I’d primarily describe this series as slice-of-life in a Superhero world. While Sleyca does occasionally throw Alden into intense, high pressure situations, the majority of this series follows Alden attending classes, decorating his dorm room, and on phone calls with his friends from Earth and other planets. When Alden’s life is busy, or when he’s pondering big decisions, you’ll get many chapters following the same event, conversation, or visit.

A common complaint from people who don’t enjoy this series as much as me is that nothing happens. I happily disagree with that assessment. I actually fell like a ton of stuff happens, but relatively little of it (by word count) is what we’d consider a traditional plot. You do get some classic plot beats – such as Alden facing down and defeating a school bully – but they’re stretched out over far longer stretches of time than I’m used to seeing in traditional novels. Even things that were hinted at from the beginning of the series, such as the mysterious alien who works/is imprisoned in Chicago whom becomes Alden’s friend and early mentor, get mentioned often enough that it never feels like truly important plot elements have been forgotten about. There’s also plenty of room for chapters that simply trace the path of Alden’s life, such as dorm parties, shopping for Christmas presents, and going through ‘intake’ into the superhuman community, all of which get several chapters of attention. It turns what could be throwaway moments into time worthy of attention, and I found Sleyca almost always finds a way to link the small moments in Alden’s life to characterization (of Alden or side characters), thematic development, or planting seeds for future plotlines. It’s remarkably well-balanced for something that crawls along at a snail’s pace.

This is a series that I can only recommend to people who enjoy the journey, and aren’t in a hurry to get there. As I’m caught up and will wait on the releases (a few chapters each month) we’ll see if I maintain contact with Super Supportive, or if I need to step away from it for a while to let it build up a backlog of chapters for me to read all at once. However, I truly think that the rewards of this series are worth the wait. I also enjoy most of the worldbuilding and plot elements that Sleyca chose to work with though, which probably makes the slow burn more enticing for me than others.

Alden as a Protagonist:
If I have any criticism of the series, it might be that Alden is a bit on the perfect side. He is the classic selfless hero, unrelentingly kind, willing to risk himself for others, and with a strong ethical compass. Even when he could enact petty vengeance, he rarely chooses that path, and he keeps making choices that mean that he’s nothing particularly unlikable about him. Hell, he’s also the only superhero school candidate who isn’t on social media. He’s the easiest type of character to cheer for, which can sometimes sap the love out of a story (for me).

To be clear, I like Alden a lot, and Sleyca makes a bunch of chocies that mean I’m not constantly annoyed at how unrelentingly kind and good Alden is. Actually, he’s a remarkably three-dimensional version of a goodie-two-shoes. He grapples with traumatic experiences which Sleyca spends a lot of time showing how he works through those memories and tries to heal. He’s got little quirks that make him endearing – such as his love of preserving ice cream with his skill to keep it from melting, or of rugs with excessive amounts of fluff. Yes he jumps into danger for others, but he also spends a lot of down-time considering what type of person he wants to be, and his decisions are sometimes driven by fear, frustration, and pride. I recently dropped The Noss Saga, a gay epic fantasy that should have been perfect for me, in part because of a too-perfect protagonist who always did the right thing no matter what. I haven’t felt that urge with Super Supportive, which is a sign that annoying (to me) tropes can be enjoyable when executed well.

From a Progression Fantasy perspective, I think Alden is a roaring success. He’s got the Rabbit Class, which was designed by the alien wizards to be easily summonable for as servants. His skill was sold to him as ‘Let Me Carry Your Luggage’ but the alien name is closer to ‘The Bearer of All Burdens’, which essentially lets him put objects and people into statis. Sleyca finds all sorts of creative applications for this across many settings, and seeing Alden grow from struggling with using his skill while standing still to freezing tennis balls that where thrown at him by a Superhero (and returning them with their motion from the original throw) is a really satisfying arc. You’ll get a lot of time with Alden exploring his powers, and with him grappling with the idea that a huge part of his ‘soul’ was linked to the idea of carrying the burdens of others. Like the rest of the series, these elements are a slow burn, but very worth it.

Side Characters & Relationships:
This is the are that I think catapults Super Supportive into something truly special. Sleyca does not slack off on developing side characters. This series has a huge cast (friends/family from before, classmates, important superhumans, various Aliens), and almost all of them get attention at some point or another. Take Jeffy. Jeffy should be extremely annoying. He’s a fellow student who took an Aquaman-style class because it was guaranteed to get him into superhero school. He’s got a blue mohawk, no common sense, and is initially used as comic relief by doing extraordinarily stupid shit (including shouting ‘LAND MOVES’ when he punches someone). However, he also has deep conversations with Alden about how he doesn’t want to get summoned to work in the deep ocean, and that he’s worried the path professors have charted out for him will make him unhappy. He starts an impromptu grilling livestream while on a video-call with his grandparents. In a shorter series, or one more focused on plot, Jeffy would have never become more than a one-liner to release tension. As it stands, he’s still a relatively unimportant side character, but he’s also gotten love and attention and development. And he’s one example from a small ocean of people I could talk about.

Another bright spot is that Sleyca prioritizes developing platonic friendships more than I’ve seen most authors do. The low-hanging fruit here are his roommates in school or the other Rabbit Class superhumans he met during intake as he was introduced to super-society. However, his relationship with Stuart is perhaps the most well-developed male/male friendship I’ve read in speculative fiction. Stuart is an alien, the son of the most powerful Knight who fights chaos, is neurodivergent-coded (though this looks different in alien cultures than ours), and plans to become a Knight himself. At first I got frustrated with how much time Sleyca devoted to their time together. I like magic schools and wanted to get back to the fun gym classes! However, this friendship keeps paying off the further Sleyca dives into things. I have cried multiple times at their conversations – rare for me – and it’s a strong enough relationship that I have to keep reminding myself that they’re good friends and not in a romantic relationship. It’s hard to turn off my desire to see gay relationships in books, but holy shit is this friendship handled well.

Worldbuilding
At first, I was not in love with the combination of wizards and superheroes. The aliens have entered in a magical contract with humans (and several other planet’s citizens) to grant powers in exchange for service. They’ve also given Earth a System, a worldwide AI that allows for, amongst other things, your brain to be a cell phone. But only if you are one of the few humans who got chosen. The alien wizards do magic, and the way Sleyca develops that magic in relation to the superhero powers is really fascinating. The alien elements ramp up more and more as the series goes on, and it’s a really fun culture and governmental setup that is different from ours. It isn’t perfect – there’s a good amount of wizard and alien supremacy happening that the aliens don’t quite realize they believe in – but having short humanoid aliens who can split their brains in half, party hard enough for orgies to be relatively unremarkable (we never see these, just know that they’re part of the culture), and take learning and education very seriously from a cultural standpoint. They’re human enough to be notable – this is actually a relevant plot point, as there were strong objections to making Earth, with a species so similar to them, a vassal planet – but alien enough to not really feel human.

And the human superho stuff is just as intriguing! Humanity decided the supers needed to live on an island away from the rest of humanity, except those who take jobs with cities to be professional superheros (whose job is mostly chasing down other gifted humans who refused to move to the island as a teenager when their powers manifested). It’s a fun little inversion of how super stories normally go, and also not the same deconstruction that’s been given a million times. Sleyca’s efforts to build up the culture of Anedesoria and its super-inhabitants is far deeper than he ever needed to go. There’s a whole 10 chapter arc about rich superhero prep schools for kids who don’t have powers yet, and I was glued to the story the entire time.

I haven’t mentioned the crazy vending machines, the original generation of supers who have their hands in a million pies, Super Humans At Large, or any other number of details. Sleyca’s setting smashes a bunch of elements together (sci fi, video game terminology, superheros, magic, school) and they shouldn’t mix. Truly this series is better than the sum of its parts.

Conclusion: a full-throated recommendation for anyone at all interested in a slow burn slice of life with expansive characterization and strong platonic friendships

• Characters:  5
• Setting:  4
• Craft:  3
• Themes: 4
• Enjoyment:  5