Re: (review) Super Supportive by Sleyca

On 2024-06-11, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

Super Supportive by Sleyca
>
An orphan sets out to become a superhero, only to discover there's far
more to the career than he knew.
>
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/may-be-the-devil

Yes!  As I've said before, I consider _Super Supportive_ to have some
of the best world-building and character building I've seen for years.
It's amazing to find such a gem in the webnovel format. The last time
I saw such a knack for getting characters "right" was Murderbot in
_All Systems Red_. And that was primarily just the main character there;
in _Super Supportive_ (_SS_)there's a host of well-done side characters (James
for his review only saw a few good side characters; several more get
introduced just after he stopped reading.)

_SS_ isn't for everybody; it's very slow and character focused. But
those who like it, really like it.  Many get involved. A major chapter
might get 2000 comments in Patreon, about the same on a fan run
Discord channel, and then a 1000 more once it gets released for free
reading on Royal Road a month later. A more typical chapter (Sleyca
comes out with roughly 2 chapters a week) might only get a third of
that.

As James said in the review, the "superheros and superpowers are good"
surface view is being gradually devalued as you read carefully more.
It's even worse than what James said - he was wrong when he said
superpowers were given to those who volunteered and worked hard. The
Avowed are not volunteers; they are involuntary draftees based on
genetics and can be summoned by the aliens at any time. All this is
well-known on Earth, but the implications and the purposes of the
aliens are not really understood by Earthlings and much less by young
Alden.  The story will definitely be turning darker; my prediction is
it will be pretty soon, within 200,000 words (it's at 800,000 now,
roughly 3-4 novels.)

The hard questions of worthiness of sacrifice are just beginning to be
explored now. Sleyca obviously has a well-developed idea of where she
wants to take her themes, the question is whether she'll be able to
continue writing at such a high level.  The Patreon readers are pretty
clearly worried about burnout and are urging her to write less!

Chris